


the fugitives

by tvfanatic97



Series: A Hero Unmasked [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, On the Run, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2020-09-28 21:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvfanatic97/pseuds/tvfanatic97
Summary: “Hey, Michelle? I think you always look pretty and nice anyway but, uh, I really like your hair. I meant to say earlier,” he tells her.She looks down almost-embarrassedly at the compliment, hands fiddling with the fake ID in her hands before she reaches a hand up to tuck a strand of her now red hair behind her ear. Finally she looks up at him again. “Thanks, but I think you mean Mary-Jane,” she teases.Peter laughs at the teasing comment, warm blood rushing to his cheeks uncontrollably. “It’s gonna take a while to get used to that.”-Or: Peter and MJ go on the run after the events of Far From Home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/gifts).

The large screen that projects J Jonah Jameson’s face continues playing, with the right-wing pundit continuing to talk about how he’s always known this so-called "Spider-Man" was a menace and a criminal. But Peter can’t hear it over the ringing of his ears and the suddenly too loud thundering of his quickening heart.

Peter finds that he’s suddenly having difficulty breathing, the respiration centre of his brain feeling like it’s shutting down and he has to kick it back to life, reboot it so he can breathe again. His nerves are frayed at the ends and he feels trapped in his own body. He wants to get away, to wake up, to just be _anywhere_ but here on this lamp post, here at a moment where his entire life has been destroyed. It’s akin to the feeling he’d experienced on a battlefield not even one year ago, looking down as his mentor took his final breaths- that feeling of _this can’t be happening_.

He has a vivid memory of a conversation he’d had with MJ a handful of months ago where she discussed a book she’d been reading at the time on mindfulness which posited that life can be boiled down into a few key moments. MJ had argued for and against the theory, comparing and contrasting it to other philosophical theory and schools of thought. Peter didn’t really get it but had listened intently, hanging on to every word out of MJ’s mouth- as he always did- as they sat side by side in a small dingy café to escape the biting February cold, both clutching cups of hot chocolate closely to warm up their frost-bitten fingers.

It’s funny isn’t it? He thinks that _now_ he finally gets it. The moments thing, because right now feels like one of those key moments that will define the life of Peter Benjamin Parker. His identity being revealed to the world along with being framed for the murder of a man and attempted mass murder of thousands in London.

The weight of the situation at hand settles heavily at the pit of Peter’s stomach as he starts to processed what’s happening and the sheer gravity of the situation. He manages to tamper down the imminent panic attack long enough to swing down and grab MJ who some of the onlooking crowd were beginning to turn to with keen interest seeing as she was the girl who was just with the accused.

Peter wastes no time to swing them away from the chaos likely to ensue and almost functioning on auto-pilot, swings them to the outskirts of the city to an abandoned office building he’d sometimes come to when he felt the need to get away from the overwhelming pressure of everything.

Once they settle down inside the building, and only once they settle down, does Peter hurriedly pull off his mask and allow himself to panic. His breaths come out in hurried pants, gasping for air that his brain which is in fight-or-flight tells him he is not getting enough of and desperately needs more of. He paces up and down in front of MJ who just sits on the dirty and likely uncomfortable ground leaning against the far wall.

“Peter-” she tries to call to him, but her voice sounds muffled and distant to his loud warring thoughts.

He paces some more, his mind moving a mile a minute as he tries to sort through his thoughts, tries to formulate a plan of action of some kind. How’s he going to prove the footage is doctored? Does EDITH have a record of what actually happened? Where did the video come from? Is Mysterio even dead? His brain fires off the questions rapidly, not giving him enough time to formulate responses or plans.

On top of that his heart feels like it’s constricting in his chest, and he feels suddenly hot and sweaty- he’s pretty sure these are all symptoms of a heart attack. Logically, he knows it’s just a severe panic attack so he hangs onto that logic and uses it to try and coach himself through some breathing exercises to help him calm down but it only works to a limited extent.

A warm hand gently landing on his shoulder brings Peter out of his head, he thus stops pacing and looks up at her, willing his breathing to calm down.

“Hey, um, where are we?” MJ asks gently, treading carefully around him. He hates that she has to do that but he can’t seem to make himself calm down, can't slow his rapid heart rate or stop hyperventilating.

He struggles to find his voice but eventually he manages to get out a, “Uh, it’s- it’s an old office building that's gonna be turned into an apartment complex. I think.”

“What are the main landmarks that you see along the way here?”

Peter blinks once, twice, unsure what she’s asking or why. But he answers her because he’d do or say anything she asked, would go to the ends of the earth for her, so he lists each landmark he remembers from the countless times he’s come here.

As he does so he finds that his once hammering heart rate gradually slows to a steady beat once more, and his breaths come more easily, the mundane task of listing New York’s landmarks helping to ground him and bring him away from the ledge he was precariously balancing on.

When he’s done answering her question he takes a few deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, the way MJ instructs him to and does with him. Eventually after a while he finally feels better- as better as someone who’s wanted by the authorities for murder and terrorism currently can feel, that is.

MJ wordlessly grabs his hand, initiating their physical contact the way she’d done at the airport what feels like a lifetime ago though he realises it was only yesterday. She gently tugs at his hand to get him to follow her to go and sit down on the ground, leant against the wall.

“Can I have your phone?” MJ asks after they’re sat down. Then more quietly she adds, “Please.”

He hands her his phone and watches as she copies something from it onto her phone then scrolls and types a few things for a few minutes before she switches it off.

“I’ve deactivated all your social media accounts and switched it off. You probably can’t use this anymore.” Then after a beat, “Sorry.”

He hadn’t even thought about how people would look him up and find all his social media and contact details on the web. He hates that he’s dragged MJ into all this, but he’s also glad to have her here at the same time.

“Thanks MJ,” he rasps, his voice feeling like it hasn’t been used in days.

“I also copied Happy’s number from your phone. I’ve texted him and your aunt to let them know we’re laying low till it’s dark at least.”

Peter swallows down the pang of guilt he feels at her use of the word _we_, as in her and him, as in she’s just as in this as he is now. He never wanted this for her.

“Thanks,” he sighs out, worn down.

After that they settle into a loaded, uncomfortable silence with neither of them knowing what to say. They stay like that for God knows how long.

“I come here quite a lot when I need to- when I need to get away from it all,” the words tumble out of Peter’s mouth before he can stop them, breaking the silence they’d settled into.

MJ doesn’t say anything in response, but she looks up to meet his eyes and watches him with soft eyes to encourage him to carry on.

So he does, “After Tony- after _he_…Sometimes it just gets overwhelming, people asking if I’m the next Iron Man and what’s happening with the Avengers. Or even when May looks at me with this pained, heartbroken sort of expression like she’s hurting for me. This is one of the spots across the city I come to just get away sometimes.”

He’s not entirely sure why he’s telling MJ this, or even what the relevance is given his current predicament but he doesn’t know what else to do and sitting here in silence ruminating is making him want to crawl out of his own skin.

“Sometimes it’s nice to get away,” she responds.

He wordlessly hums in agreement.

“But sometimes, sometimes it’s also good to reach out for a hand to pull you to the surface when you feel like you’re drowning,” her voice is quiet, almost sounding shy but her gaze on him is steady and assured, like she means what she’s saying.

Peter only momentarily holds her gaze before looking away, exhaling audibly.

They stay in the abandoned building for a few more hours, occasionally talking about random topics though they steer clear of anything related to Peter’s identity being revealed to the world or anything about Mysterio. But mostly, they sit in silence until daylight gives way to darkness outside and sunlight is replaced by moonlight.

“Happy texted me an address that he said we should come to,” MJ tells him. “He says there are federal agents and press camped out at your apartment so it’s not safe to go there.”

Peter swears under his breath at the disruption to May’s life this has also caused.

“Is May with him?” He asks and he’s scared of the answer.

“Yeah, he said she’s safe.”

He sighs in relief, at least in this whole shit storm he can at least be assured that she’s safe.

“Listen,” MJ starts, once again bringing him out of his thoughts. “I’m gonna go ahead first to my apartment to grab some stuff whilst you stay here then I’ll come back and we can head to the address Happy texted.”

“What? No MJ, you can’t go out across the city by yourself at night. It’s not s-”

MJ interjects to stop him, “You’re in your spidey suit, Peter.” Then when she’s assured he’s done with his protests she carries on. “I’ll grab some clothes you can wear then bring them back here for you to change. The suit isn’t exactly inconspicuous, even at night-time”

Peter has to concede to that. He couldn’t even claim to be a cosplayer because it’s his new black and red suit, not enough time has passed since his return to New York for the black and red to be selling in masses like the blue and red. “Okay,” he sighs defeatedly.

“I won’t be long, okay?” MJ says in farewell.

“Okay.”

They both kind of hover awkwardly for a moment, neither sure what to do before MJ eventually gets up off the floor and leaves the building.

* * *

MJ is gone for maybe an hour tops, Peter playing with different web combinations to entertain himself and doing his damned best to distract himself from panicked thoughts about the Mysterio situation whilst she’s gone.

When she comes back she has the large military style backpack she’d had on their European trip, the large one that looks like it could fit an entire walk-in closet worth of clothes.

“Hi,” he greets her with a small smile hurrying to stand to his feet and trying to tamper down the relief that floods through him at the fact that she came back. He'd spent the entire hour she was gone constantly reassuring himself that she wouldn't just leave him and trying to silence the small voice at the back of his head which kept asking but _what if_.

“Hey,” MJ greets briefly, her small smile visible under the lone light by the wall which is the only one in the abandoned building that still works, before she busies herself with digging out clothes from her bag. She hands him a pair of sweatpants, a t-shirt and a hoodie he remembers her wearing at various points. The familiarity he has with MJ’s wardrobe is embarrassing and creepy, but mostly creepy.

Without thinking, he strips off his suit to start changing and only realises what he’s done when MJ freezes, watching him with a wide-eyed stare before she rushes to face the other way to give him some semblance of privacy.

Where it under different circumstances Peter would appreciate the way MJ turns around every so often to steal glances at him as he changes but it's not so he just focuses on changing as quickly as he can.

Once he’s done changing, he pulls the hood of his borrowed hoodie up so it nearly covers his eyes then MJ takes his suit and shoves it to the bottom of her bag before they walk to a nearby bus stop and catch the bus to the address Happy sent.

The journey doesn’t take too long, maybe 45 minutes, 30 of those being on the bus then 15 on foot to walk the rest of the way. Happy is waiting for them by the door of the non-descript apartment complex and immediately ushers them in and leads them upstairs to one of the apartments.

The apartment is relatively sparse but from the few items he can see strewn about he works out that this is Happy’s place which surprises him because in all the time he’s known Happy he’s never been here. There they find May waiting, pacing up and down the length of the living area and biting at her nails- something Peter hasn’t seen her do since Ben died- but she stops as soon as she hears them walk in.

“Peter, oh my God!” She shouts when she spots him.

Immediately she rushes to wrap him up in her arms. And though Peter is 16 now, he can’t help the calm that immediately washes over him with the warmth of May’s embrace. Being held by her feels like home and for a brief second he almost forgets what’s happening currently, all that he feels being that sense of “everything is gonna be okay” he always feels when he’s around May.

“Are you okay? Wait, dumb question. I’m just glad you’re here sweetie,” she mumbles into his shoulder, her hands gently carding through the hair at the nape of his neck.

They stay like that, arms wrapped tightly around the other and swaying in place for a while until May eventually lets him go then goes around him to greet MJ whom she’s met the times MJ has come to study or for movie nights with Ned.

He doesn’t hear the words the two women exchange as Happy leads him further into the apartment so they’re not all gathered by the front door.

May makes him and MJ sit down on the couches which make a nice change from the hard concrete floor they’ve been on all day, before forcing food into them. Peter hadn’t realised how hungry he was until he digs into the Thai food May got them, and he’s glad she had the foresight to buy so much food because it’s been hours since he last ate and with his increased metabolism and calorie requirement he needs all of it.

May makes the two teenagers stay put whilst she cleans up once they’re done eating, then when she comes back they finally discuss the elephant in the room.

“What are we gonna do?” May wastes no time jumping into it. Peter has to again ignore the stab of guilt he feels at her use of the collective pronoun, tamper down the disgust he feels at himself for dragging so many of his loved ones into his mess.

“I’m trying to get in touch with Pepper, see if we can get you access to her fancy lawyers to see what they say you should do from a legal standpoint,” Happy offers.

“Will I need lawyers? It’s just his word to say I’m Spider-Man and we could prove the video is doctored, _right_?" Peter tries.

“The feds are still gonna wanna question you, and due process doesn’t apply to potentially super-powered individuals. They’d throw you in the Raft,” Happy says it all matter-of-factly. He must see the way Peter tenses at the mention of the water prison because his tone softens, “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen though, kid.”

“Even if you weren’t super-powered you’re poor and the American criminal justice system isn’t in favour of those without money,” MJ adds with a mirthless snort.

“I need to run,” Peter declares after a moment of thought. “We can work to prove the video is fake, and maintain that I’m not Spider-Man since there’s no proof beyond Mysterio’s word but I can’t stay here.”

That sets off the dominoes as the group comes together to start planning.

“I can get access to S.H.I.E.L.D. safe-houses across the country you can use, I just need to call Nick Fury,” Happy says, phone already in hand as he starts dialling.

“I’ll be the voice in your corner advocating for you from here,” May says earnestly.

“No May, I need you to maintain that you didn’t know anything about this. You have to denounce me. I don’t want them to bring you in for aiding and abating. Ned too.” He looks from his aunt to MJ, “I need you guys to publicly distance yourselves from me in case we can’t make this go away and I’m brought in, I couldn’t live with myself if you guys got into trouble as well.”

“Peter,” May says, sounding heartbroken and she looks at him with that same pained expression like she thinks he burdens himself too much.

“I need you to do this for me. _Please,_ May.” His eyes bore into hers, pleading with her.

After a tense moment where he thinks she might continue arguing with him, May finally sighs dejectedly, “Okay sweetheart.”

Next he turns to face MJ to plead with her too.

“No,” she tells him point blank.

“MJ-”

“No, I’m coming with you.” And she must see the way his mouth opens, ready to protest because she carries on talking without allowing him the chance to get a word in. “I’ve already been seen getting cosy with Spider-Man today. I’m coming with you,” she declares simply.

“MJ, please.”

“I didn’t tell you this but when I went to get my stuff I watched the news quickly and they- they have a picture of me on the news with you. They’re looking for me too, so I’m just as in this as you are. I’m coming with you.”

Her tone leaves no room for argument but he still tries to stare her down, to get her to back down and concede to stay and distance herself from him and his alter ego, to protect herself, but it’s useless because MJ doesn’t back down, only stares back at him with steely eyes and arms folded.

“Okay,” he eventually agrees when he sees it’s no use trying to argue with her. That and the fact that May is sitting there next to her so it isn't the right time to get into it.

From then on, him, MJ and May work together to make a plan. The two women help him pack a small bag from the clothes May had brought over with her then they make a shopping list of supplies May agrees to go out and get for the two of them.

May and Happy head out of the apartment, to get them the supplies they need and to meet a S.H.I.E.L.D agent respectively, leaving him and MJ alone in the apartment.

They stay sat with him on the large couch, and her on the armchair in the corner, in silence for a stretch of time, neither sure what to say.

Peter is first to break the silence, “MJ, are you sure about this? You can just say I rescued you from a mugging or something and you didn’t know that I’m Spider-Man. Distance yourself from all of this,” the _from me_ goes unsaid.

“God, Peter. You know that I can’t do that.”

“I just want you to be safe, MJ. Just say you didn’t know, you have nothing to do with Spider-Man,” he begs her.

“I can’t turn around and say I didn’t know it was you when I was literally straddling you Peter. I’m in this whether you like it or not!” she fires back loudly, louder than Peter has ever heard MJ’s voice go. Even when Flash is being extra dick-ish in Academic Decathlon MJ never shouts, she’s always calm and composed, never gets emotional.

Peter sags, his guilt overcoming him again. “You shouldn’t be in this. You don’t deserve this.”

“What, and _you do_?” she challenges.

Right now with the way he’s put his loved ones in danger and dragged them into his mess he certainly feels like he does. “I’m really sorry, Michelle,” is what he says instead, speaking around the lump forming in his throat.

MJ stands from the armchair and comes to sit right next to him then she turns him to face her with a gentle hand on his shoulder before hugging him, and it’s as he rests his head on her shoulder that he realises that he’s crying, his tears likely making her clothes wet in the process.

She holds him like that for a while and lets him cry then speaks once his cries have subside some. “Peter, you’re a good person who just wants to help people and you don’t deserve any of this, and I want to help you. I am coming with you out of choice not because I’m being forced to. This is Mysterio’s fault, not yours.”

Her tone is so even and sure that he almost believes this isn’t his fault even though deep down he knows the responsibility lies on him, but he decides to stop fighting her. “Are you sure this is what you wanna do?”

She finally lets him go and scoots away to put a bit of space between them; the physical contact aspect of this whole thing between them is still awkward and new to them despite the adrenalin-fuelled kisses they’d shared on Tower Bridge in London, so they don't know exactly how to navigate it all.

“Well, this isn’t exactly how I had planned to spend my summer but yeah, I’m sure.”

“How were you planning to spend your summer then?” He asks. He already knows because they’d discussed it at multiple points- she planned to catch up with her reading list and attend art classes at a local college- but he’s yearning to hear MJ talk about something she’s excited about, yearns for a break from the nightmare that is his life right now.

MJ surprises him with her response. “It’s stupid,” she says, her eyes going to her lap instead of looking at him as she plays with her hands in a nervous gesture. “I had kind of hoped to spend the summer going on dates with you and doing all the gross, mushy stuff I’d deny enjoying if ever questioned about doing. I wanted to take you to this gallery that has an exhibition by my favorite local artist and do the cheesy stuff like go on a movie date and share popcorn and gummy worms, hold hands and sneak kisses in the darkened theatre." She exhales audibly, continuing to play with her hands and refusing to meet his eyes. "Like I said, it’s stupid,” she says, clearing her throat and shaking her head, putting on a mask once again.

Peter’s mouth twists into a grin at its own accord. MJ never ceases to amaze him.

“Maybe after all of this is over we can do all that “_gross, mushy stuff_”.” The lie sits heavy on his tongue. He doesn’t know if this living nightmare will ever end, if they'll ever get to be normal teenagers who do normal, dumb teenage couple things ever again but it feels like the right thing to say in the moment.

“Yeah, maybe,” MJ breathes out but he can tell by the way she squeezes on the nail-bed of her right thumb with the fingers of her left hand that she’s not so sure about that either, the doubtful undertone to both their words lingering in the air between them.

After a beat of silence Peter speaks again when a thought occurs to him, “What about your parents? Will they be okay with you just leaving to go on the run with a wanted criminal for an undetermined time?”

MJ huffs out a laugh though it sounds mirthless and sad rather than humourful. “You're not a criminal, and my dad would have to be around to even realise I’m gone.”

Peter doesn’t know much about MJ’s parents or home life. She’s never invited him or Ned to her house, instead always opting to hang out at one of the boys' houses- mostly Peter's- and whenever the topic of her parents comes up she expertly changes the subject in a way that tells him she doesn't want to even broach the topic. Peter has never questioned her about them because he respects her boundaries and had figured she’d tell him in her own time if she ever wanted to. He respects her privacy and autonomy to decide which aspects of her life to share with him more than he wants to know everything there is to know about her.

He wants to triple check that she’s sure about this whole thing, to maybe try and talk her into staying just one more time but May walks back in at that moment with bags of items and stops their conversation before it can carry on.

“Hey, I got the hair dye and a bunch of other stuff you’ll need,” she says in greeting.

Though him and MJ weren’t doing anything, Peter still shuffles away from her to put some more distance between them just on impulse as he turns to greet his aunt.

MJ gets up off the couch to accept a bag from May and help her unpack everything.

“I got a bunch of dyes, I think there’s blond, black and red in there. You guys can choose,” May explains as she sorts though the bags once her and MJ have placed them on the kitchen counter.

MJ wordlessly picks out two colors and comes to hand him one which he sees is the blond one. He starts to protest the choice, “I don’t know if this blond is really me.”

“That’s the point, dork,” MJ snorts bemusedly. “They have a physical description of you and whilst there are some things you can’t change about yourself, like your height for example; this is something we can alter so you have to. I’m doing it too.”

Peter sighs, opting to ignore the short joke. She’s right and he knows it. “I’ve never done this before,” he admits quietly, trying to come to terms with the reality of the situation.

“I’ll do it for you, c’mon,” MJ says before she starts heading to the bathroom without waiting for him.

She makes him sit on the closed toilet lid of the toilet once they get there then gets to work mixing the contents of the dye pack. She then dons the plastic gloves and gets to work on putting the dye into his hair, section by section.

She stands between his legs as she works and Peter feels overwhelmed and breathless at her heady proximity. He tries to work to breathe normally whilst MJ for her part works meticulously, almost like she’s done this before.

“You used to dye a streak of your hair,” he declares out loud without meaning to, it’s an answer to a question he'd been asking himself in his head.

“Uh, yeah, yeah.” And she sounds vaguely embarrassed in the same way she always does when anyone talks about her or notices a detail about her, especially when he’s the one who does it. He doesn’t get why she does so, but suspects it’s because she’s worked very hard at being invisible, at blending into the background as an observer rather than the observed.

“I really liked the purple streak,” he admits shyly.

She gasps slightly, like she’s surprised he noticed. Which is ludicrous to Peter, and he almost tells her as such, tells her just how much about her he’s noticed but MJ finishes up, removes her gloves then disposes of everything.

“Wait a few minutes then wash your hair. I’m gonna help May with, um, stuff,” she says and gives him a small smile before practically running out of the bathroom. Peter would be amused by her reaction if his own heart wasn’t embarrassingly fluttering in his chest from spending that stretch of time in the position they were in.

Once the door clicks shut behind MJ, Peter just stays sitting on the toilet lid for a while longer as instructed both to allow the dye to work and to catch his breath and try to think about something else besides the feeling of MJ’s hands in his hair.

Eventually when the timer of MJ’s phone he hadn’t even realised she left on the bathroom counter goes off he gets up and heads into the shower.

* * *

When Peter comes out of the shower sometime later, he wraps a towel around his waist then opens the door to find some clothes on the floor by the door laid out for him which he grabs then closes the door again.

He uses Happy’s deodorant and other toiletries in the bathroom, dries his hair with the nearby hairdryer, then changes into the clothes he realises he doesn’t recognise as being his. It’s a simple pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a leather jacket but they are more form fitting than he’s used to as someone who normally wears clothes that are a size or two too big to hide his radioactive spider-bite derived physique. 

He looks at the reflection and between the clothes and the now-blond hair, he doesn’t really recognise the person that stares back at him. He looks older and just all around, _different_. It’s slightly unnerving but he supposes that’s the whole point of all this.

After giving up on trying to style his hair in some way using just his fingers he eventually leaves the bathroom. As soon as she sees him, MJ hurriedly and wordlessly slides past him to head into the now free bathroom before he can look to see what colour dye she chose.

“Peter, you look…_different_,” May says when she spots him, her eyes narrowed and focused specifically on his hair.

“You hate it,” Peter declares.

May’s eyes finally pan down to look at his face rather than at his dyed hair. “No, no honey.” Lie. “It’s just different to what I’m used to. I like the natural curls, I much prefer this to when you lather your hair in hair gel,” she says as she reaches up to ruffle the aforementioned curls. It’s clearly a diversion tactic but he elects to ignore it.

“May,” he whines at the action, but doesn’t bother trying to fix it when she moves her hand away- he might as well let his hair do its own thing.

“Do you like the clothes by the way?” I figured something different to your usual nerdy garb would be good for the whole covert, _on the run_ thing,” May says conspiringly. Her tone matches that of an out of the loop parent trying to use modern slang to relate to their teenage child, like a parent trying to throw in a “lit” into conversation and Peter almost wants to laugh at how much his life differs to that of normal teenagers.

“My clothes aren’t nerdy!” Peter protests, finally registering the jibe.

“Oh sweetheart,” she responds, and her voice is laced with pity like he’s missing something that’s so painfully obvious to everyone else.

He doesn’t get to press her further as after that Happy returns with a small bag in hand. From the bag he takes out four disposable cell phones, two of which he hands to Peter for him and MJ, one to May and one for himself. He also takes out a laptop, keys and a wad of cash all of which he hands to Peter.

“The keys give you access to every S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house in the country, I’ll give you the addresses. The laptop is an encrypted high-grade one from Stark Industries you can use if you need to use the internet for anything but you should only do it when absolutely necessary- buying train and bus tickets and what have you, not to tweeter or anything.”

Peter doesn’t bother to correct the older man to let him know that it’s Twitter and you “tweet”, it doesn’t feel like an appropriate time, so he just nods at the instructions.

Happy carries on, “From now on we’ll use these disposable Stark cell phones to contact each other. They can’t be tracked. Always text either May or I when you get to a new safe house so we can keep track of you guys, okay?”

“Yeah, yep.”

“The cash is all I could get without rousing suspicion, I’m sorry it’s not much,” the man says apologetically and Peter almost snorts because he’s not used to handling money lest of all in such large quantities but he’s pretty sure he has a few thousand dollars in his hand which Happy calls "not much". “But all the S.H.I.E.L.D. houses should be stocked with basic groceries, so you should only need cash occasionally to top things up.”

“Thank you Happy, for _everything_,” Peter starts to get choked up. In a short amount of time Happy has managed to organise all this for Peter, it’s nice to have people working to help him even if he hates that they’ve all been dragged into this. All his feelings about Happy and May and their _thing_ aside, he’s also glad that Happy will be there to look out for May since he won’t be able to himself.

Something occurs to Peter, “Ned-”

“I’ve spoken to Ned and told him what the plan is,” May assures.

“I’m gonna have a Stark Industries security detail on him and his family, and Nick Fury said he’ll also have some of his people watching them 24/7. Don’t worry, Pete, your family'll be looked after,” Happy adds.

Peter would prefer to ensure May and Ned are safe from Spider-Man's enemies himself, but it’s better than nothing, and he has no doubt that the SI and S.H.I.E.L.D. guys will be able to handle anything that may crop up.

Once he’s done explaining everything to him, Happy has Peter stand against a plain white wall and takes a picture of him and Happy is on the phone once again asking the person on the other end if they got the picture before Peter can question him about what the picture was for.

May then helps him pack up the things Happy got for him and shows him some of the other new clothes they got for him, all of them so simple and plain and yet so different to anything he’s ever worn before. There are no punny t-shirts or wool sweaters to be found anywhere, it’s weird but necessary he has to keep reminding himself.

He’s going over the travel plans with May and reassuring her that he’ll call her as soon as they get to Connecticut when he hears MJ walk into the living area.

Peter looks her over and notes how she’s wearing a pair of blue jeans which she’s paired with a white crop top, the outfit so unlike anything he’s ever seen MJ in though she still looks as great as ever but MJ looks visibly uncomfortable in the clothes, further driving home how this is so not her style. What draws his attention the most is her hair; she has straightened it and it’s a deep red color that really suits her- though he’s certain he would think that whatever hair color her hair was.

Like an idiot he just stares at her, mouth agape and dumbfounded. He can’t find the words to express to her how amazing she looks despite how much he wants to, rendered completely speechless.

He sees MJ bite her lip, likely trying to contain a grin at his dumb expression. Just as he’s gathered enough composure to say something to her that’s not just making incoherent sounds, Happy walks into the apartment and calls MJ over to the same plain wall from before and like he did with Peter, Happy takes pictures of MJ against it.

He then calls someone before wordlessly walking out of the apartment again.

May beats him to commenting on MJ’s hair. “Oh MJ, you look beautiful. I mean- you _always_ look beautiful of course, whatever you wear and whatever hair colour. I didn’t mean to imply that you look beautiful only because you’ve drastically altered your appearance. Oh God, I’m so sorry,” May continues to ramble endearingly, and Peter offhandedly wonders if that’s what he sounds like those times when MJ tells him to stop talking so much.

The two of them go to sort through MJ’s bag, and Peter watches as May hands her a box of tampons with a quick “I got you more just in case” then once they’re done they continue chatting quietly amongst themselves.

Soon after Happy comes back into the apartment.

“Okay, my guy managed to make these for you. He said they’re not amazing quality since I quote, unquote "_rushed_ _art"_ but they’ll do you,” Happy says before handing a driver’s license to Peter then handing MJ one when she comes to stand with them.

Peter looks down at the fake ID in his hand which has the picture of him Happy took from earlier and Peter looks as unprepared as he has in every picture that’s ever been taken of him. The ID has a different birthday from his usual one, making him officially 18 rather than 16 and the name on it reads: **Benjamin Anthony Reilly**.

“I chose the name,” May tells him and he looks up and smiles sadly at her. At least he’ll take part of his family with him despite the circumstances.

Peter turns to look at MJ’s and she in turn tilts the card in her hand so he can read it more easily. He sees that she’s similarly now 18 years old rather than her actual 17, that and she looks much better in her picture than he did. The name on her ID reads: **Mary-Jane Watson**.

“We’re legally adults now, I guess,” MJ jokes.

“Yeah,” Peter says with a small laugh.

May and Happy walk away to go and print off their bus tickets leaving them alone for a moment.

“Hey, Michelle? I think you always look pretty and nice anyway but, uh, I really like your hair. I meant to say earlier,” he tells her.

She looks down almost-embarrassedly at the compliment, hands fiddling with the fake ID in her hands before she reaches a hand up to tuck a strand of her now red hair behind her ear. Finally she looks up at him again. “Thanks, but I think you mean _Mary-Jane_,” she teases.

Peter laughs at the teasing comment, warm blood rushing to his cheeks uncontrollably. “It’s gonna take a while to get used to that.”

“You can just call me MJ, it still works,” she says with an easy shrug. Then after a beat, “I like your blond hair too, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Peter retorts when he senses the teasing lilt in her voice.

“No, no I’m serious,” she keeps insisting, laughter barely contained. “Makes you look…_whiter_.”

Peter playfully knocks his shoulder into hers. “I hate you.”

She rights herself to stand upright again then turns to look directly at Peter. “No you don’t,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.

“No I don’t,” Peter breathes out in agreement. He’s suddenly aware of how close to each other they are like this, he can smell the cocoa butter of her lotion from this close, hear the way her breath hitches as she comes to the same realisation about how close they are. He watches as MJ blinks, doing so hesitantly like she doesn’t want to for fear that she might miss something if she does which is a feeling he can relate to.

Just as Peter makes the decision to close the gap between them and press his lips to hers, May and Happy walk back into the living area with the printouts of his and MJ’s bus tickets in their hands, both Peter and MJ immediately taking a step back away from the other to put a respectable distance between them. They accept the tickets then with the help of May and Happy, they gather up their things and get their shoes and jackets.

They’re all set to go except May continues to fuss over them, double checking and triple checking the plan with them, and giving the pair advice to make sure they stick with each other and lean on each other over this time as well as thanking MJ for choosing to do this, to stick by Peter. She also keeps reassuring him over and over again that they’ll work this out and it’ll all be over soon and he can come home again, back to her, really soon.

She hugs Peter tightly and presses kisses all over his face like she used to when he was younger and Peter pretends to be embarrassed by the affection, weakly protesting and trying to fight it with a “May, _stop_” here and there. Deep down he appreciates her fussing over him but is also sad that this is the last time he’ll get to experience her fussing over him for God knows how long. That coupled with his lingering guilt about the effect this has all had on all of them despite their reassurances just all weighs on him, but he manages to hold it together, barely, not wanting to make this goodbye even any harder than it needs to be.

Eventually May lets him and MJ go with one final hug and kiss to each of them and Happy drives him to the bus station

It’s only once they’re sat there waiting for their bus that Peter finally allows the toll of the day to catch up to him, and he breaks down and starts silently sobbing. MJ doesn’t say anything, just offers up her shoulder for him to lay his head on as he cries which he gladly accepts.

He cries into her shoulder as she cards her fingers through his curls to comfort him as they wait for their bus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes this is yet another fic of Peter going into hiding post-FFH, give me a break. Updates will hopefully come on Wednesdays but we all know I'm unrealiable and with uni having just started I am extra unrealiable nowadays so pls don't hold me to it. I am really excited about this one tho and will try my best. Hope you enjoyed this opening chapter and as always, comments and kudos are much appreciated!!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


	2. Chapter 2

A sense of unease prickles at the back of Peter’s neck, making the hairs there stand to attention and dialling up his spider-sense, leaving him unable to fully relax as the waves of anxiety thrum under the surface of his skin. The sense of dread, that paranoia that anything could go wrong at any moment buzzes in his head constantly even though he’d set E.D.I.T.H to remove all traces of him and MJ from CCTV footage as they travelled, and had double and triple checked that the AI system had executed his command.

His nerves have him feeling restless and too keyed up to relax. The only thing that stops him from crawling out of his skin or jumping out of the moving bus is MJ’s sleeping figure draped over him. She’s resting her head on his shoulder, hair tickling the crook of his neck, and one of her hands is draped over his middle and rests over his own hands that he’s tightly clasping in his lap. Occasionally she’ll soothingly rub her hand over one of his clenched ones; she does it whilst still fast asleep, almost subconsciously, making him think she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it but it helps to ground him at the moments his paranoia peaks and his senses have him scoping out each of the other seven people on the bus with them for the umpteenth time so he appreciates it even if it may not be intentional.

MJ, likely sensing his unease, had initially suggested they take turns sleeping but with just over an hour remaining of their journey Peter has no intention of waking her up even though she's been asleep since they first got on the bus. For one, his spider-sense wouldn’t allow him to sleep even if he tried, but more than anything he’s content to just watch MJ sleep and look at least somewhat peaceful in the midst of the chaos of his own making.

His guilt at having dragged her into all of this eats away at him on top of everything else. Why had he thought taking her for a swing in broad daylight where anyone and everyone could see her was remotely a good idea, much less a romantic date? Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

She’d been so insistent about coming with him and a small, very selfish, part of him is happy—relieved, even—that he doesn’t have to face this all on his own, that he’ll have her by his side. Immediately, he tampers that sense of relief down and feels a sense of shame and self-loathing because he’s dragged MJ and all his loved ones into his mess and he somehow has the gall to be glad she’ll be with him, that she’s giving up her summer, giving up _everything_ to be with him just so he isn't alone. 

His thoughts spiral on from there, thinking about how through his sheer stupidity he has endangered his loved ones and anyone that was in his—_Peter Parker's_—life. From their friends and fellow classmates likely blowing up their phones about the news, to the media likely constantly hounding them to find out about him, to criminals and villains looking to get to Spider-Man and all his loved—

As if sensing his rising panic, MJ chooses that moment to wake up and immediately wraps a hand over his which he hadn’t realised had been tightly gripping his leather jacket to the point of ripping through the fabric.

“Are we there yet?” MJ breathes out, voice barely above a whisper, slightly raspy and sleep-laden and she slowly blinks herself more awake.

Peter has to clear his throat a few times to try and recover his ability to speak again after hours without. “Um, nearly,” is all he manages to get out.

“Cool,” she says before moving to properly hold his hand in hers; initiating the physical contact like she has done in their short relationship thus far. “Did you know that the word ‘_Connecticut_’ is derived from the Mohegan word ‘_quinetucket_’ which means running beside the long river so the state is literally named because it runs along the Connecticut river.”

“Oh yeah?" Peter says as he relaxes his previously stiffened posture to settle into his seat more, as well as tightening his hold on MJ’s hand-- the only thing keeping him afloat.

“Yeah, Connecticut is basically named because of white people not being able to, or rather not even _trying to, _pronounce something ethnic sounding so just butchering it and sticking to their butchered version of it.” MJ interlaces their fingers as she speaks, helping to abate some of his slight embarrassment at how tightly he was gripping her hand.

“Classic white people,” he jokes.

MJ moves off his shoulder and Peter has to resist the urge to whine in protest because that’d just be pathetic, but his disappointment at the loss of contact doesn’t last long because she moves so she’s facing him and he could never be disappointed when he has _the _MJ staring into his eyes at such a close distance. It’s like a dream.

“Peter, _you’re _white,” MJ says it in a whisper, like she’s revealing some shocking secret that could change everything to him.

Peter leans closer to her slightly and widens his eyes for effect before he speaks. “I’m _what_?” He says in faux shock.

Almost as if in slow motion, he watches a grin stretch out across her face. To his delight he even gets a small, quiet snort to go along with it in response to his joke and Peter feels his stomach flutter embarrassingly with pride at having elicited that response.

All MJ says is, “Dork,” with a teasing lilt before going back to resting her head on his shoulder, snuggling her head into the crook of his neck, much to his relief.

The rest of their journey carries on with MJ recounting random facts about Connecticut, and amazing Peter with the insurmountable amount of knowledge she has in the process. Occasionally, she also quizzes him with academic decathlon-style questions about when it attained statehood, what the state capital is and so on.

* * *

Two bus rides and a brief walk later they arrive at the S.H.I.E.L.D safe house. It’s almost exactly what Peter had imagined a spy agency safe house in rural Connecticut would look like – a small wooden cabin that’s relatively secluded with the nearest neighbour being over half a mile away. It’s quiet and quaint in a way the Queens born and bred Peter is unaccustomed to.

After two botched attempts to get the front door open by him, shortly followed by MJ taking the keys from him and getting the door open on her first try with no trouble at all, they walk into the cabin.

It’s small but cosy as opposed to feeling cramped. It’s comprised of a large open space that serves as the kitchen, living room and dining room all in one, then a small bathroom and a bedroom, just the one (Peter tries and fails to not think about how they’re going to sleep).

MJ looks through all the cupboards and the fridge in the kitchen to take stock of the supplies they have and finds that they have enough food to last them a fortnight or so, maybe not the fresh fruit and vegetables but everything else will last that if not longer. One of the cupboards, or what outwardly appears to be just a regular kitchen cupboard is also filled with a mini arsenal of various weapons – handguns, mini explosives, knives – serving as a brutal reminder that this isn’t the regular, quaint country cabin it outwardly looks like and that this isn't some cute cross country trip he's taking with his girlfriend.

It’s a little overwhelming and saddening for him, so Peter leaves MJ to continue taking stock of everything and goes to settle in the living area of the large open space where there’s a two-person couch. In front of the couch sits a wooden coffee table then there’s a medium-sized flat screen TV mounted to the wall.

Peter is perched on the couch ensuring E.D.I.T.H has combed through all the CCTV footage from all the places they’ve been so far to delete all traces of him and MJ when he’s suddenly struck in the face with what he thinks is a granola bar.

“Ow, what the hell MJ?” he asks, moving a hand up to rub at his chin where he was hit, not because it actually hurt but just on principle.

“I thought you'd have been warned about me throwing that by your-” MJ starts to say.

Peter interjects to stop her finishing her sentence. “Please don’t say the words “_Peter tingle_”,” he grits out.

“Uh, _what_?” MJ asks, genuinely taken aback but equally trying to hold back a shocked laugh at his words.

Peter’s eyes widen.

“I was gonna ask if you have enhanced reflexes with your powers but, are you – do you call your powers your _Peter tingle_?”

“No!” Peter rushes out, embarrassed. He pauses, tries to calm himself down a bit before continuing. “No, no I don’t call it that. It’s, um, it’s stupid. Don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.” He can feel the heat blooming within his cheeks and knows they’re likely going a bright hue of red as well. “We should probably call May and Happy to let them know we’re here, right?”

He appreciates that MJ doesn’t tease him about his transparent attempt at changing the subject but instead just goes to settle on the couch next to him as he digs out his burner phone.

He dials May’s phone number, puts it onto speaker then places it on the table as they wait for her to pick up. As the phone rings a few times, Peter tries not to focus on just how close MJ sits to him on the small couch because it’s not like this is the first time they’ve sat so close together—there was the plane back from London then the bus to Connecticut—but everything always feels new and like a first with MJ.

May’s voice rings out from the cell phone just in time before his slowly drifting hand makes contact with the side of MJ’s thigh and he embarrasses himself.

“Hi sweetheart. Are you guys at the safe house? Did you have any trouble getting there? Are you guys okay? How is the safe house? Is there enough food?” She fires off the questions one after the other without allowing him or MJ the chance to respond.

He hears a voice in the background, he assumes it’s Happy, tell her to slow down and let them respond then May speaks again, “Sorry honey. I’ve just been so anxious to hear from you.”

His pre-existing guilt about always making May worry because of his Spider-Man stuff, no matter how much she insists she’s okay with it and puts on a brave front – a front he knows is just that, a front, because it’s similar to how she’d been in the months immediately following Ben’s death – for him, compounds at hearing he’s added to her worrying even further. He decides to push all that guilt aside for now, instead choosing to focus on the conversation at hand.

“Our journey here went well and we had no trouble getting here. We _both_ slept on the way here as well,” MJ responds on his behalf, her eyes briefly flitting to hers as she tells May the lie. Peter gives her a small appreciative closed-mouth smile in return.

“Good, good. Happy wants to know if the safe house is all good,” May says through the speaker, voice sounding slightly distant as if she’d pulled the phone away from her.

“It’s all good, fully stocked up with everything we could ever need,” Peter says, voice slightly strained from the forced casual, reassuring tone.

“What-” They hear May mumble on the other side. There’s some slight rustling from May likely moving the phone around before she finally speaks again. “I’ve put the phone on speaker, Happy wants to tell you guys something.”

“It’s best that you guys keep moving around, only stay at each safe house for two to three weeks max. There’s multiple safe houses in every state across the country whose locations are all loaded into an encrypted file on the SI laptop I gave you, so you guys can choose and pick which ones to move to. You just need to text us the day before where you’re headed so they prepare the place for you guys and it’s important that you don’t stay confined to the same areas, try not to stay in the same state more than once if you can help it. Each safe house is stocked with everything you need so you shouldn’t really need to go out much, and if you do- keep it brief and keep to yourselves. Make sure you always get E.D.I.T.H. to wipe CCTV footage.” Happy’s tone is matter of fact, just relaying the facts. A beat passes, he exhales loudly enough that it’s audible on the other side of the phone, then in a much softer tone, “I’m really sorry things have to be this way.”

There’s a silent stretch where no one says anything as they take in the barrage of information thrown at them.

“Hey, guess what? All the safe houses have all the streaming services! They even have cable; can you believe that? _We_ don’t have cable Peter!” May rushes out in a cheerful tone to break the heavy silence, ever the optimist and clearly trying to soften the whole situation, to find a positive in this overwhelmingly bleak situation.

Peter smiles a small, sad smile at her words before realising she can’t see him. “That’s amazing, May,” he gets out but it sounds sadder than he intended, voice slightly shaky and choked up. The only thing that keeps him anchored, stops him from fully breaking down over the phone and in turn making his aunt break down as well, is the weight and warmth of MJ’s hand that moves to hold his where it rests in the small gap between them on the couch cushions.

He clutches her hand tighter in his, then tries again. “I can finally catch up on Grey’s Anatomy so we can carry on watching it together from season 8 when I get back.”

“I’d really like that,” May chokes out between what sound like sobs.

He hears rustling sounds and moving around on the other end of the line. After a moment Happy speaks again. “Your aunt has just gone to the bathroom, kid.” Peter feels his heart constrict in his chest. “The keys I gave you will work at every safe house, and Peter – I have put your suits in a secure location but it’s really important that you don’t do your Spider-Man thing, don’t put yourself in situations you have no business being in that will draw attention to you or MJ. Just keep a low profile. Both of you.”

“We will,” MJ jumps in to respond before he can. She looks to him with a determined gaze.

“We’ll keep a low profile,” Peter affirms.

“Okay,” Happy says and he sounds relieved. “We’ll call you guys regularly to check in but call me anytime if you need anything, okay?”

Peter and MJ both hum wordlessly in response.

There’s a beat, then another where no one seems to know what to say. Then finally, “I’m just, uh, gonna check on May. You kids be smart, and be safe.”

And with that Happy hangs up the call, leaving him and MJ to stew in an uncomfortable, overwhelmingly melancholic silence. The weight of everything hits Peter once again, and just thinking about his aunt crying on the other end of the phone just now causes tears to start freely falling down Peter’s face.

Almost at its own accord his head moves to rest on MJ’s shoulder as he allows himself to cry. He cries for a while, he’s not sure for how long, before a feeling of embarrassment overcomes when he thinks about how this isn’t the first time he’s cried like this in front of MJ. May has always taught him it’s okay to be open with your emotions, to let it all out, but he can’t help but wonder if maybe this is all too much for MJ. She’s not the type of person who’d think less of him for being emotional, something she’s made clear to him when he’s listened to her speak about how the patriarchy leads to men being emotionally constipated amongst many other things, but maybe she’s overwhelmed by his displays.

Peter would never want to make MJ uneasy or uncomfortable so he rushes to move off her shoulder and to furiously wipe at his wet cheeks. “Sorry about-”

“If you apologise one more time I’m gonna go back to New York,” she says, voice deadpan but she watches him with open, soft and slightly concerned eyes.

“You can go back to New York whenever you want to,” he says with his voice barely above a whisper because despite her reassurances about coming with him he wants her to know she doesn’t need to do this, doesn’t need to give up so much for him. He wants her to know she has an out whenever she wants it; with Happy’s and S.H.I.E.L.D’s help they could easily work something out for her that wouldn’t involve her having to be on the run with her boyfriend of just three days.

“I don’t want to go back to New York. I want to be here, with you,” MJ tells him, voice firm and sure and gaze never faltering from his.

Her stare is intense and slightly overwhelming but Peter holds it, nevertheless. After a beat where he looks into her eyes to gauge that she truly means it, he finally breathes out a quiet, “Okay.”

“Okay,” MJ breathes out, keeping her volume equally low.

It’s only then that the pair seem to realise just how close they are, faces only mere inches apart, and they both simultaneously move to put some distance between them with Peter shuffling to the other side of the couch whilst MJ hurriedly gets up to head back to the kitchen area.

* * *

They spend the rest of the day taking stock of everything that’s available in the safe house and going through the belongings they brought with them to see if there’s anything they need, then they go through the catalogue of all the TV shows and films available to them via all the streaming services available to them.

For a few hours, MJ draws a bit then reads on her Kindle. Peter is content to just watch her read, thinking back to how she’d told him she likes the romantic idea of books – the “book” smell, the process of searching through and finding the perfect book in your favorite bookstore, the general feeling of having a book physically in your hand – but isn’t so snobbish as to be completely anti-devices like e-readers. A sense of guilt niggles at him because he knows she’s reading from the Kindle because it’d have been easier for her to bring in her single bag compared to actual physical books.

Peter automatically reaches out to catch a projectile he hadn’t realised MJ had launched at him before it hits him square in the face. He looks at the object and sees that it’s a book titled ‘_Never Let Me Go_’ by Kazuo Ishiguro – he remembers MJ giving him a detailed comparison of the novel to the film once.

“Stop watching me like a weirdo and read that,” she tells him without looking up from her Kindle.

He dutifully does as she says and reads it. So they spend the rest of the day curled up on the couch, him sitting up whilst MJ lies on her back with her legs stretched out so they partly rest in Peter’s lap whilst her feet dangle off the arm of the couch. Peter tries and fails to not notice just how long her legs are.

Once it’s evening the two make dinner together, though it’s mostly MJ who does the cooking whilst he happily assists her with little tasks she asks him to do like chopping up the onions because MJ hates that part of cooking. When he asks MJ how she knows how to cook so well she makes a vague comment about how she’s had to look after herself for a long time and doesn’t elaborate beyond that so he doesn’t push her, just continues being her assistant chef to help finish making dinner.

They have their vegetarian stir fry together on the small two-person dining table as MJ tells him about the book she’s reading and in turn asks him about how he’s finding the book she gave him to read. It’s really nice.

For the first time since he saw that J. Jonah Jameson news report he feels light – or as light as can be given the situation. He almost allows himself to revel in the warm feeling eating dinner with MJ and making small talk about the books they’re reading as they occassionaly accidentally kick each other the table in an unintentional game of footsie, then doing the dishes with her after they’re done eating and just the general domesticity of it all gives him.

Things however become awkward when it comes time for them to sleep.

“I think I saw a spare blanket in the wardrobe in the bedroom so I’ll take that and sleep on the couch then you can have the bed to yourself,” Peter is first to bite the bullet and address their sleeping arrangement when he feels like the two have been avoiding it for too long and need to work something out because it's getting late.

MJ doesn’t respond for a stretch of time, making Peter sweat. Then eventually, “It’s just sharing a bed, don’t be weird.”

“I wasn’t being weird, I just thought you’d like to have your own space and I-” Peter sputters.

“We’re mature young adults who can share a bed. It’s not like anything’s gonna happen,” MJ cuts in.

Peter’s eyes widen as his mind immediately goes to inappropriate places at her words.

MJ must misinterpret his reaction because she starts speaking again, “Not that I’m saying nothing will e_ver_ happen. Just that something isn’t gonna happen, like, _tonight_ because we’ve only been boyfriend and girlfriend for like a couple of days.”

Peter agrees with her of course, but he’s still trying to recover his voice and say something that won’t end up with him embarrassing himself.

“Not that I believe in the notion of “not giving it up” too soon or other misogynistic ideas made to shame women for their sexuality,” MJ rushes to fill the increasingly awkward silence. In a softer, more shy voice she then adds, “I’m just not personally ready to do…_stuff_. Okay?”

Peter’s brain finally starts functioning and he’s able to speak again so he can stop making this so awkward. “Yeah, yeah, _totally_. Me too. Sorry I made things weird, I just thought you’d want some space but if you’re okay to share the bed then-”

“Yes I am,” MJ rushes out, interrupting him.

“Cool,” is all Peter can say.

“Cool.”

With that the two slowly, awkwardly, clear up and lock everything up then make their way into the small bedroom.

MJ heads to the bathroom with her pajamas and a toiletry bag in her hands leaving him to change in the now empty room. When she gets back a few minutes later he then heads to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth then after staying in the bathroom for way too long as he tries to calm himself down about the prospect of sharing a bed with MJ, he finally goes back to the bedroom.

He finds MJ already in the bed, having chosen the side away from the door which he appreciates because sleeping close to the door will give him some sense of ease, however small that may be. He slowly gets into bed with her and lies right on the edge to ensure there’s a nice gap between them because he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

He plays around on the SI burner phone whilst MJ reads some more for a while until she eventually puts her Kindle down on the bedside table on her side of the bed. He takes that as his cue that she’s ready to sleep and he should get off his phone so they can switch the lights off.

She moves first to switch off the lamp on her side then Peter does the same then they just lay there, both on their backs facing the ceiling of the darkened room in complete silence.

Neither move nor say a word for some time. Eventually he feels and hears MJ shuffle along the bed to bring herself closer to him then she tentatively takes his hand in hers. When he turns sideways to look at her she’s still lying on her back and facing up at the ceiling rather than at him, and even in the dark he can make out the vague contours of her face from side-on and she’s as beautiful as she always is. She continues to stare up at the ceiling and doesn’t turn to look at him so he turns back to face the ceiling as well.

Then after a beat. “We’re gonna figure this out, Peter. You'll see,” her voice is quiet but steady, determined. She then briefly squeezes his hand and Peter squeezes her hand back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for making you all wait so long for a shortish filler chapter sdlfhslkdfjs. I don't even have an excuse for why this update has taken so long and I can't promise that future updates will be quicker either, pls just be patient w me 😬. Anyway, not much in terms of plot here but hope you still enjoyed it somewhat and as always, kudos and comments are much appreciated!!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A time jump and some fluff.

The two of them laying low, or “keeping a low profile” as Happy had instructed them to do, turns out to be easier said than done at least for Peter.

All Peter wants to do is be out there, helping those in need and feeling the cool air whip past his masked face as he swings between skyscrapers up above the commotion with the best view of his home city. It feels unnatural, like a betrayal of sorts, that all he can do is sit still hiding away from the chaos occurring outside; hiding away from his _responsibility_.

But the guilt over endangering his loved ones and those with a connection to Peter Parker currently outweighs his guilt over not being out there using the powers he was granted by chance in the form of a radioactive spider to help people, to an extent, meaning he does his best to stay put and stay hidden as everyone is telling him to do.

That aforementioned guilt continuously gnaws at him, ever-present to the point where it just constantly lingers in the back of his mind like cosmic background radiation (an analogy MJ would no doubt call him a nerd for, he's sure). As he’s making dinner with MJ there it is: _guilt_. As he’s working out within the confines of the safe house of the fortnight to use up some of his pent up energy: _guilt_. As he watches MJ read whilst he pretends to watch TV or do other things: _guilt_. Guilt, guilt, _guilt_.

The guilt is often accompanied by a feeling of helplessness but he figures he can alleviate that somewhat, try to make this entire thing a little less awful for MJ who’s right at the centre of this mess with him by trying to make the most of it. After all, one way of looking at all this is that he’s a teenage boy who gets a large amount of uninterrupted and unsupervised time with his girlfriend – no meddling aunts or parents, no door open rules, and lots of food, flat screen TVs and all the streaming services in existence courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D.

So armed with that silver lining Peter decides he’s going to plan out dates for him and MJ, make the best out of a bad situation instead of constantly moping the way May has always encouraged him to do growing up.

Between moving from safe house to safe house, from state to state, Peter uses the (admittedly few) resources available to him to set up things for him and MJ to do.

Movie nights where he sets up the living room of whatever safe house they happen to be staying in at that point in time to be completely dark to imitate the theatres they would be going to on dates if they were back home and sneaking kisses the way MJ wanted to do if life hadn’t gone to shit. Dinner dates where he uses the things he’s learnt from MJ to make her a meal that they eat on a dining table he takes the time to set up like a restaurant to allow them to pretend they’re at a mid-range restaurant he might have been able to take MJ to after saving up his allowance for a few weeks, if they weren’t currently fugitives. Make-shift picnics on the living room floor meant to replicate the Central Park picnics he may have taken MJ on were he not wanted for murder. Streaming aquarium videos on YouTube to allow them to pretend they’re at a real life aquarium on dates they would’ve gone on if they weren’t running from the law. And so on, and so forth.

He thinks, or at least hopes, that MJ enjoys the “dates”. She always smiles a small, beaming smile at him – one he has committed to memory at this point because it’s just so perfect and beautiful, just like MJ – all throughout the dates and at the end will always give him a “not bad, dork” plus or minus a kiss (or full blown make out session as of late as they're becoming more and more comfortable with the physical aspects of being boyfriend and girlfriend and just generally comfortable with being around each other).

The elation he feels at bringing some semblance of joy and normalcy to MJ helps him get through the days, though the guilt at how he’s not out there, at how he’s abandoned his responsibility to all those in need still eats away at him and he can’t seem to allow himself to be selfish enough to just be in the moment and enjoy the time with his girlfriend without thinking and speculating about what could be going on out there, back in New York and how he can help.

So in between telling MJ a dorky science joke she’ll pretend she doesn’t find funny even though he’s gotten pretty good at reading her and can always see amusement dancing in her eyes and the way the corner of her mouth up quirks, trying to smile and defy her clear attempts at hiding her amusement, or between listening to her ramble about anything and everything, his eyes quickly flit down to the notifications of his burner phone looking at the news alerts that pop up.

At night, under the comfort of their blankets and darkness him and MJ share their deepest secrets and plans for the future along with small, lingering kisses. Then when MJ falls asleep – she always falls asleep first because Peter needs to see her sleeping first before he’s able to even close his eyes and sleep himself – Peter will quickly scan news headlines.

It starts off with alerts for news coming out of just New York in general, a broad safe topic that allows him to pretend he’s just wanting to stay informed not actively seeking out updates on himself and his situation.

But soon it’s not enough, and though he’s enjoying his time with MJ and enjoying getting to know her so intimately in a way he could have only ever dreamed of months ago post-blip and post losing Tony when he realised she was the reason he was able to carry on and face each new daunting day in spite of all the loss and suffering, the guilt and restlessness still eats away at him. So he narrows the news alerts down to news out of Queens. Then down to news about vigilantes. Along with reading news stories online, he also watches the national cable news occasionally too.

Him being away from New York stops him from being able to watch local New York news. As for the google alerts, the only thing that stops him from further narrowing it down to “Spider-Man” alerts outright is that he’s almost certain MJ is onto him, has likely noticed the way that occasionally despite his best efforts his attention just sort of, drifts, shifting to his phone for a split second when they’re together.

He doesn’t want to worry her or further burden her, so he stops himself short of setting up Google alerts for Spider-Man and limits himself to only watching live “news” i.e. J Jonah Jameson’s show (how that man has a show that’s broadcasted nationally is partly beyond Peter but also makes sense given the resurgence of right wing politics back into the mainstream that’s been happening since the Blip) because his show always has a segment on Spider-Man-related news – the man is clearly obsessed with him.

It’s all he can do for now to ease his guilt and restlessness, to ease the feeling of helplessness having to hide away whilst other people deal with his mess and being unable to help despite his capability to help gives him. It’s all he can do.

In the meantime though, he plans dates for him and MJ to “go on”. Not just because of his guilt that she’s in the midst of this with him and also has to hide away from the world, but because he wants to and would be doing this otherwise if his life hadn’t fallen to pieces with just one news report and fake video. He does it because MJ is the best and deserves the best.

* * *

_“It’s been weeks since the manhunt for the masked vigilante we now know to be Queens native Peter Parker went underway, and yet the criminal has yet to be apprehended and brought to justice. You’re telling me, the combined forces of NYPD, the FBI, the US Marshall Service and Homeland have failed to bring in one sixteen year old? Your tax dollars are being funnelled into this manhunt yet there doesn’t seem to be much man hunting going on by the very people who swore an oath to serve and protect the people of this city. These people only serve themselves! Ask yourself why after weeks we have yet to see tangible results from this manhunt_…”

The conspiracy theorist voice of J Jonah Jameson drones on on the TV that sits a mere six feet away from the couch he is perched on, but to his ears it sounds distant, _muffled_, like static in a sea of white noise – indecipherable from the other sounds around him like his racing heart, the leaky faucet of the kitchen sink, the quiet hum of the old fridge, the distant sounds of MJ moving around on the other side of the closed bedroom door, the sounds of Boston going about its day unaware of the wanted fugitives hiding out in an apartment right at the heart of the city –

“Peter?” MJ’s voice brings him out of the state of near-stupor he’d unwittingly fallen into, simultaneously making him realise that at some point she’d come out of the bedroom and come to stand crouched right in front of him. He’s slightly disturbed that she managed to sneak past his heightened senses but quickly dismisses thoughts about how he’s losing his touch with the time he’s had away from being Spider-Man as quickly as they form because this is MJ. _It’s just MJ_.

He quickly reaches for the TV remote to switch the news show he’d just been caught watching off then clears his throat, puts on his easy smile he has reserved for MJ in an effort to reassure her and looks up to meet her eye. “Hi,” he hopes he doesn’t sound and look as nervous and simultaneously besotted as he feels – he doubts he does a good job of hiding either feelings from MJ though.

MJ flops onto the couch besides him and brings her socked feet up to rest on his lap as she settles into the couch to make herself more comfortable. “Okay, so what do you have planned for our date thing today?”

“I need you to stay in the room a little longer,” Peter says shyly.

“Peter,” MJ huffs. “I’ve just gotten comfortable here.” To make her point she leans back so her head now rests on the armrest of the couch to show that she has no intention of getting up.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just thought you’d be a bit longer. I need like, five minutes to set some stuff up,” he adds a pleading smile plus the so-called “puppy-dog eyes”, as MJ has dubbed them, on for good measure to plead his case.

MJ groans in response and rolls her eyes likely at him abusing the puppy-dog eyes to get his way.

“Please, Em. I’ll give you so many kisses because I’ll be so grateful.” He brings a hand up to hover just over the exposed sliver of skin between her leggings and her sock and pauses -- he’s getting a bit more used to being around MJ like this but there is still a bit of lingering hesitation to his movements, still that dizzying mixture of excitement and nerves that make him tentative when it comes to touching MJ; he wonders if that nervousness will go away with time as the two of them get more comfortable around each other but given the way his heart still flutters when she so much as says his name, even just an exasperated “Peter”, he doesn’t think it ever will and he thinks he's okay with that.

After a moment’s hesitation he brings his hand down, using the tips of his fingers to trace indistinct patterns onto the skin he comes in contact with. “My dates are always worth it, right?” he asks, half to convince her because he’s pretty sure she’s enjoyed all the various dates he’s set up for her within the confines of their safe houses thus far, but also half seeking reassurance because it’s really important to him that she has enjoyed them, that she has enjoyed at least some aspect of this almost hellish scenario where she’s stuck on the run with him.

“I suppose your dates thus far have been…_somewhat_ enjoyable. Adequate is the word I'd use,” MJ says with an exasperated sigh. She tucks her face into her chin to hide the small grin on her face which would undermine her words, a grin which makes Peter’s own lips automatically stretch into a matching grin, before she swings her legs off him and gets off the couch. “You have four and a half minutes, and I’ll be counting in my head. You know how accurate my internal clock is,” she warns as she pads to the bedroom before closing the door behind her.

Peter allows himself ten seconds of his allocated four and a half minutes to watch after her like the lovesick fool he is before he turns back to grab a box from under the coffee table that he’d placed there earlier. He runs to the cupboard near the front door to grab all the spare blankets that came with the safe house then brings them back to the couch before he moves the coffee table out of the way. He then spreads all the blankets out along the floor, takes the cushions off the couch and throws them haphazardly over the blanket pile. He grabs some snacks from the limited collection that came with the safe house and lays them out on the blankets before cueing up a new documentary MJ has been planning to watch for a few days now.

He stands by his set-up, quickly runs a hand through his hair in a futile attempt to neaten it because he can never get rid of his desire to look his best for MJ, it’s kinda stupid. He then calls out to MJ, “You can come out now!”

“That was five and a half minutes,” is the first thing MJ says once she comes out back into the living area, tone unimpressed but not really given the slight smile he sees on her lips and in her eyes.

“You let me have an extra one minute?” Peter asks with a happy sigh.

“I lost track of time,” she counters.

“Not with your accurate internal clock,” he retorts cheekily, trying to hide his grin.

MJ rolls her eyes but doesn’t try to argue with him any more as she walks towards where he’s stood. She then pauses and waits opposite him, like she’s waiting for further instruction, like she wants to do this his way, whatever that may be because she's fully on board for his ridiculous ideas.

Peter clears his throat, then in his best-worst official, posh English accent, “For this evening’s festivities, we shall be going to an outdoor cinema screening of _‘Loud, Bold and Proud: Black Queerness in modern America_’. Please enjoy the complementary snacks provided and be sure to cuddle your boyfriends at all times, we highly encourage it in fact. Enjoy the show, ma’am.” He ends his ridiculous charade with a poorly executed bow like one would do for royalty which MJ sort of is as far as he’s concerned even though she's admittedly anti-monarchy.

“Dork,” MJ says but there’s no bite to it whatsoever, in fact she’s smiling as she says it – a small, barely there smile that he likely may not have noticed a few months ago but with the weeks of being in close proximity with her in S.H.I.E.L.D. safe houses where they’ve only had each other for company, he now never misses each time she throws in his way.

“You may take your seat, madam,” he says gesturing towards the blanket pile on the floor.

“You went from doing a terrible English accent to a terrible French accent,” MJ says with a snort as she sits down on the floor.

Peter joins her and settles next to her, sitting up with his back leaning against the couch behind them. “At least I’m consistent.” MJ goes to say something, likely a snarky retort in response to his bold statement but he beats her to it, “Consistently _terrible_, that is.”

That gets a giggle out of her, the sound of which warms him up from the inside out despite the AC being on full blast to keep the sweltering summer heat beyond the walls of the small one-bed apartment they’re in out there. Sometimes he wants to record the sound of her giggle and convert it to mp3 so he can listen to it whenever. Sometimes he thinks he’s being ridiculous.

“Okay so, the snack selection isn’t _amazing_ but we do have Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and M&Ms. I tried.”

“Not bad, punk,” MJ comments as she slides to sit next to him with her back pressed against the couch behind them as well, their bodies lined up from their shoulders to their feet.

He takes that as his cue to start up the documentary, and the two settle into a comfortable silence.

They watch the documentary, occasionally munching on their snacks undisturbed for a while and move positions so that Peter now has his head resting on MJ’s lap (after MJ insisting that it was okay for him to do so and that she even _wanted _ him to do so when he’d tried to protest it and insist she put her head on his lap instead) until there is a segment in the documentary that details the background of one of the subjects of the documentary. In it, she details how she was fortunate enough to be raised by an aunt who was always so supportive of her, who gave her the room to explore her identity without judgement no matter what the world outside the safety of the home she grew up in threw at her as a black trans woman.

The whole segment gets Peter thinking about how though his circumstances are so different to the woman speaking and those of the people in the documentary (he’s not a black trans woman, the population most likely to suffer violence and with the shortest life expectancy in the US currently – MJ has educated him on a lot he was previously ignorant to over the past not just weeks they’ve been on the run but over the last year since they’ve grown closer), he has an aunt who is so supportive of him, an aunt who allowed him to go out and be a vigilante even though it frightened her and she didn’t understand it entirely because she knew it was what he wanted, knew that he felt a responsibility to do so – a responsibility to use his powers to help those in need because that was the person she and Ben had raised him to be. For all the good that did her.

That ever-present guilt that lingers mostly at the back of his mind travels to the forefront of it with his thoughts about May, about Ben, about his responsibility and about Spider-Man now eating him up.

But before things can escalate, before his panicked thoughts manifest physical symptoms, he feels MJ’s hand start to run through his way too long hair (it’s kind of difficult to get haircuts when you’re on the run from the law), helping to soothe him and bring him back down. Peter is, as he always is where MJ is concerned, amazed because – _how does she do that_? Just know when he needs her, and how to be the exact calming presence he needs? It’s amazing, _she_’s amazing.

They watch the rest of the documentary like that, his head resting in her lap as she runs her fingers through his hair, occasionally gently scraping her nails against his scalp in a move he'd discovered he liked during a make out session, as the documentary that’s a beautiful celebration of individuals who are still so little represented in the mainstream media plays on on the TV.

Once it finishes Peter makes no move to sit up, too content to just stay where he is with MJ’s hands in his hair, gently running through it and slowly but surely lulling him into a sleepy state.

“Your big head is cutting off circulation to my legs,” MJ says, breaking the silence eventually.

He moves to get up, apologies stumbling out of him. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t realise.”

“Oh my God Peter, I am messing with you,” MJ says, placing a gentle hand on the back of his head to direct him back onto her lap. “You’re so gullible.”

“Maybe so,” he relents as he gets comfortable once again and MJ goes back to playing with his hair.

They settle back into the nice, pleasant silence of before for a while until MJ eventually breaks it once again. “Hey Peter?” Her voice sounds small and tentative, in a way that snaps Peter to full attention from where her soothing hands where lulling him to sleep because MJ’s always so assured when she speaks and it’s rare that her voice sound so unsure and small, at least when they’re not lying in bed under the cover of darkness with their faces just inches apart as they talk about the effects being dusted and coming back five years later to a world that had moved on without you have had on them and other secrets they only share with each other.

“What’s up MJ?” he asks, concerned.

“Um,” she pauses, inhales and exhales audibly like she’s gathering herself. “Do you think it’s a good idea to watch the news? To keep up with news reports about you – or Spider-Man – I mean?”

He doesn’t respond immediately, considering her words. He’d done his best to not alert her to his restlessness and itching need to know what’s happening and be out there given that he was already burdening her so much, but of course MJ had noticed it anyway, she is the smartest and most observant person he knows so of course she’d have noticed despite his best efforts to hide it. “No, no I guess it’s not,” he finally admits with a weary sigh.

“I mean you can watch it if you want, but maybe it’s not helping with trying to lay low y’know? Like, doesn’t – doesn’t hearing about what’s happening out there, what’s happening back _home_ just make it harder to be here, to stay put and not do anything?”

As always, MJ is right. “Yeah, yeah it does. You’re right,” he sighs out. After a beat, “I just – it’s hard to be here and not be able to do anything, y’know? To not know what’s happening out there and just have to stay put whilst other people deal with this when Spider-Man is _my_ responsibility and this is my mess.”

MJ doesn’t say anything, just continues to card her fingers through his curls, silently encouraging him to continue to open up.

So he does. “It’s hard for me to not be out there, to not be suited up,” he finally admits what’s been bothering him aloud.

There’s a stretch of silence where MJ doesn’t say anything. Then finally, “How about –” She pauses, hesitates.

“Tell me MJ, please,” he encourages.

“How about if we started to go out occasionally, just to the grocery store like once a week maybe?”

At that he sits up so he can face her, look into her eyes fully to see if she truly means it not that he thinks MJ would ever say something she doesn’t mean because he knows she wouldn’t but just to make sure.

Her voice is tentative, unsure, “I know you’re going stir-crazy staying inside all the time and I appreciate that you’ve been setting up all these nice dates for me to make me feel better so this can be something we do for you, so _you_ can feel better.”

“Em—”

She interjects to stop him saying the rest of his words. “We’d have to be smart about it though,” she says, this time less tentative and more resolved, her voice firm. “We go out late at night when there’s less people out, we always go together and we only stay out for half an hour max. We try to avoid interacting with too many people, and you don’t do anything Spider-Manny that could draw attention to us, okay? We need to lay low like Happy told us to.”

Her voice is now pleading as she says the last part so Peter reaches forward to grab her hands in his own. “I’d never. I’d never endanger you like that Em. I promise, I’ll lay low. I’ll do exactly as you say. I promise.”

MJ scrutinises him for a moment. “Okay,” she finally says. Then after a stretch, her voice having gone back to being as soft and quiet as it was before she adds, “And Peter? Spider-Man may be your responsibility but Peter Parker is _my_ responsibility. Peter Parker is May, Happy, Pepper and Ned’s responsibility so let us help you because that’s _our_ responsibility, we're here for you.”

Peter doesn’t respond straight away instead contemplating how he ever got so lucky to have someone as wonderful as MJ in his life.

His unbidden and slightly terrifying thought about how this is it for him, how _MJ_ is it for him is interrupted by MJ herself speaking again. “Peter Parker is Flash Thompson’s responsibility too, can’t forget good ol’ Eugene,” she says the words with a small smirk, clearly teasing and perhaps trying to walk back her previous statement, likely feeling like she may have overwhelmed him with the significance of it. She hasn't.

Peter loves her, he loves her for willing to be vulnerable with him like this, for being here, for being her. Before he does something stupid like confess his feelings to his girlfriend of not even two months and scare her in the process, he leans forward to press insistent kisses all over her face, his shyness about initiating physical contact with MJ fading away, all but forgotten because God – this is exactly what he’s needed without even knowing it but of course MJ knew, and he’s so glad to have her beside him. He murmurs his thanks over and over again as he presses kisses to her forehead, to each of her eyelids which she has scrunched closed likely from embarrassment at how ridiculous he is being, to the tip of her nose, to both of her cheeks before finally landing on her lips, where he lingers.

“You’re such a loser,” MJ says when he finally pulls away. Almost instantly after he pulls away she moves her hands up to wrap around his neck and pull him back to her, this time to kiss him more deeply and insistently as she shuffles closer to him.

* * *

Three days after their conversation about going out, they venture out to a nearby 7-Eleven for the first time.

It’s late, nearly 1am, and given that it’s a weekday it’s relatively empty and quiet with little to no life around. It’s not quite the eerie quiet of previous places they’ve stayed like rural Connecticut, but it’s not the never-ending bustle of _home_ – of New York – either, it’s somewhere in the middle.

It’s mid-summer so it’s not freezing out even at the late hour so the hoodies the pair don over their pajamas with the hoods over their heads are sufficient to keep them warm from the slight breeze. It’d been MJ’s idea that they wear sleepwear so they look like your average college students out on a snack run in the middle of pulling all-nighters and don’t stand out or draw attention to themselves in anyway; Peter goes along with it because MJ is smarter than him and knows best.

“Just act normal, _Ben_,” she whispers to him, hand squeezing his slightly in warning as they approach the store front. She likely noticed how jittery he’s been, constantly checking and double checking their surroundings as they’d made the short five-minute foot journey to the 7-Eleven.

He exhales to try and calm himself down, grips the E.D.I.T.H. glasses that sit in the front pocket of his hoodie once more. “Sorry Em – _Mary-Jane_,” his tongue twists abnormally around the pseudonym, making it sound unnatural to his ears. It’s likely because he hasn’t had to use it thus far given how they’ve stayed to themselves, stayed indoors apart from the times they’ve travelled from safe house to safe house.

Or maybe not just to his ears because MJ also seems to notice how weird he sounds. “Just call me MJ, dork.”

He squeezes her hand and turns to give her a small smile. “Okay, MJ.”

They then walk into the store, MJ leading the way and dragging him along by their joined hands as she heads straight to the snack aisle with no preamble. Peter for his part, meanwhile works on resisting the urge to scope out the 7-Eleven, to keep looking around him and sizing up the other two other people in the store along with the bored cashier who looks like they're on the verge of falling asleep against the counter.

MJ lets go of his hand and Peter has to resist the urge to whine in protest; pathetic. She then starts grabbing items off the shelf and handing them off to him. “Okay so, we need regular Oreos for me, Double Stuf for you, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for us both, M&Ms…” MJ continues listing off the items she picks up as she hands them off to him and Peter is more than content to watch her work through the snack aisle with the same determination and concentration she’d have for reading a novel or working through Academic decathlon flashcards.

He’s in the middle of listening to MJ talk about how they shouldn’t just live off crap like what is in both their hands just because they’re away from adult supervision and for him to remind her to let Happy know that he should request that S.H.I.E.L.D. stock up the next place with more fresh fruit and vegetables when something catches his attention.

The hairs at the back of his neck stand to attention and his senses are sharpened as he suddenly turns his attention to their surroundings and to the slowly approaching figure. He feels his heart rate start to pick up, his palms start to get slightly sweaty – though if it’s panic at the thought of someone having spotted and recognised him and MJ, or excitement that things may escalate to the point of him needing to use his powers for the first time in nearly two months, he is not entirely sure.

He slowly turns to face the figure who he’s certain has been following them since they came into the store expecting to find a threat. What he finds instead is a half-dead looking guy who’s likely no more than a few years older than him – probably a college student, if he had to guess – blindly reaching for a pack of Twizzlers (gross). The guy doesn’t pay Peter any mind, doesn’t even seem to realise Peter is stood there watching him with great suspicion, and instead just turns to walk to pay after grabbing what he needs.

Peter breathes a sigh of relief and berates himself for being so panicky and overly paranoid before turning to face MJ again. Except he finds that she’s no longer stood next to him, no longer even in the same aisle, in fact.

He tries not to panic because he knows that realistically, logically she probably walked to the next aisle, not realising he was no longer by her side as she rambled on about eating healthily, but anxiety and logic/realism don’t always go hand in hand and he finds himself starting to panic slightly, both his heart rate and breathing picking up a notch.

He’s not quite at the full blown hyperventilating stage of panic yet, and is trying to will himself to move, to walk out of this aisle and locate MJ in the small store when he sees her rounding the corner to come back to him. “Oh hey, there you are. I was just grabbing some ice cream—” Her steps falter as she likely notices the state he’s in. “_Ben,_ are you okay?” The name sounds so natural when she says it, she plays her role very well.

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, instead taking a few large strides to come and stand by his side. “Hey, it’s okay. We can go back home if you want. Who needs M&Ms anyway, right?” she says, trying to keep her tone light. She’s moved everything she was holding in both hands so it all rests under her one arm then brings the now-free hand to rest over his forearm.

He finally snaps out of it and meets her eye, embarrassed. This whole thing had been for his benefit so he wants to see it through. He clears his throat and tries to find his voice again. “No, no, it’s okay. Got everything?”

“Yep, let’s go pay c’mon.”

They can’t hold hands with all the various snacks they’re holding but MJ stays close by him as they walk towards the front of the store. When they reach the cashier she must notice his hesitation because she steps forward to put all their food on the counter, taking the stuff that he tightly grips in his hands out with a gentle rub to his hands to get him to release the items before she places those snacks on the counter too.

Peter just stands back, staying behind MJ as she deals with it all and makes small talk with the woman working behind the counter.

“That kinda night, huh?” The woman notes bemusedly, eyeing their unhealthy selection of food they've got.

MJ giggles, puts on a charming smile, and Peter notes how easily she falls into this role of being Mary-Jane, being open, friendly and chatty in a way she isn't really normally. “Yeah, just the usual college student diet, y’know?”

“How come you guys are here over summer?” The cashier asks as she continues to ring up their items.

Peter freezes, panic starting to rise in him because he forgot it's the middle of summer and most college students wouldn't be around thereby poking holes in their "college students pulling an all-nighter out on a late night snack run" disguise but MJ responds quickly and easily. “Internships and summer school, go figure,” MJ says, rolling her eyes and causing the cashier to smile.

“Sucks to not be home for the summer but it could be worse,” the cashier says. “You could be working nights at a 7-Eleven.”

MJ winces sympathetically as she fishes a reusable bag that Peter didn’t even realise she had on her out of her hoodie pocket to pack all their items into. Peter continues to half-listen to the two as they talk about MJ’s hair and as MJ encourages the other girl to go for it with dyeing her hair red like she’s been meaning to.

Peter takes the bag from MJ as she waves goodbye to the cashier then the two of them walk out of the store to head back to the safe house.

They make the short journey back hand in hand in silence, neither sure what to say. Then when they get back to the apartment they unpack their shopping and pack it away in the small kitchen still in silence before they each go to the bathroom to brush their teeth and wash their faces to get ready for bed in turn.

It’s only once they’re settled in bed, MJ lying with her back pressed closely to his front whilst he has an arm draped over her waist with his hand resting over the sliver of skin of her stomach that’s exposed where her pajama top has ridden up so she’s the small spoon (something rare since he’s usually the small spoon when they cuddle like this) that Peter finally says something.

“Um, I’m really sorry about earlier. I don’t know what that was,” he says, voice barely above a whisper because he always feels like he should whisper when it’s dark.

“You don’t need to apologize Peter,” MJ says, volume equally low.

“I just – it’s so stupid because I’ve been dying to go outside yet the first time we venture out when it’s not to catch a bus or train to take us to our next safe house I panicked because I thought some random guy who was probably just after some late-night snacks was onto us and was following us.”

“It’s not stupid, Peter. You have powers that make you highly attuned to your surroundings and you have every reason to have them dialled up right now, you just want to keep us safe and that’s okay,” she reassures, bringing a hand to rest over his which is on her stomach before rubbing his knuckles soothingly.

Peter takes her words in, tries to let them sink in and to ignore that self-doubt that tells him that he’s pathetic.

“We can go to the store again next week if you want, or not if you don’t want to. Whatever you want Peter.”

Peter still occasionally hesitates when it comes to initiating intimate physical contact with MJ, occasionally has to be reassured one, two and even three times by MJ that it’s okay to touch her, that she wants him to, but this time there is no hesitation when he leans forward to nudge some hair out of the way with his nose before he presses a lingering kiss to the back of her neck because God – _he loves her_.

“That tickles,” MJ breathes out with a giggle, pulling away from his tickling lips. So of course because Peter is a little shit, he presses further kisses into the back of her neck and blows a few raspberries into the skin for good measure.

MJ can’t stop giggling and Peter can’t stop smiling, letting his favorite sound wash over him and relax him, allowing him to let go of all his worries and anxieties and prepare to go to sleep for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a bit of a time jump here (of ~6weeks) because I didn't want things to go day-by-day and meander. I plan to have the events of this fic take place over months rather than be quickly resolved after a couple of weeks bc up until IW+Endgame, the mcu really likes to resolve things quickly and w a neat lil bow and yeah...no. Anywho, I'm trying my best not to leave too long b/ween updates now!! Hope you guys enjoyed this latest chap, let me know if the time jump works for you etc. As always, kudos and comments are much appreciated!!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 or on twitter @dayaspsychic where I mostly freak out about zendaya and spideychelle x


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm aware it's been 2 months since I updated this and I'd apologise for the wait but in 2020 I think fic authors should stop apologising for not posting/uploading bc real life happens sometimes or you just don't have the motivation/inspo to write. 
> 
> What I will apologise for however is the geography of this fic, I'm aware that I've kind of written Peter and MJ going back on themselves to end up in NJ which doesn't make sense and I should've planned out the states they travelled to a lot better for which I'm sorry. Hope you can suspend your disbelief over that detail...let's just say its' Peter and MJ being young and not really knowing what they're doing??? 😬

Peter’s chest heaves, blood thrumming beneath his skin from the residual adrenaline of the night’s events as he takes in the sight before him. MJ stands in front of him by the kitchen table which he notes has things scattered over it: flour, sugar, butter, eggs and one of those tubs of pre-made cake frosting.

He realises they’re ingredients for a cake at the same time he remembers what the date is, remembers that it’s nearly 4am and officially his 17th birthday.

MJ looks at him, eyes probing and speaks. Her words feel like a bucket of ice cold water being dumped over his head, a brutal wake up call that makes him realise what he’s done all over again. How stupid he’s been.

Peter would like to say everything that happened happened because of a momentary lapse, an impulsive mistake made in the moment that had lead to the unravelling of the safe haven they’d worked to create. But looking at it more objectively, things had been building up to Peter’s mistake especially in the few days leading up to it.

A perfect storm.

_Inevitable_.

* * *

**Monday**

It was starting to get easier, the being on the run with MJ, the going out to the store just so they wouldn’t go stir-crazy indoors all the time, all of it.

He could now go out to whatever 24/7 convenience store of whatever town they were staying in at the middle of the night without becoming so overcome by his anxiety and his Spidey sense being on overdrive to the point of driving him paralytic, overwhelmed. He still remained as vigilant as ever, having E.D.I.T.H. scrub all camera footage that managed to capture them as well as having a constant awareness of their surroundings whenever him and MJ would go out.

Overall though, he was now able to go out shopping with MJ with relative ease hand-in-hand with their fingers tightly interlocked to bring them impossibly closer like right now as they walk to the 7-Eleven near their Trenton safehouse.

The paranoia and pervasive sense of helplessness still lingers at the back of his mind, ever-present and unrelenting, but he tries to focus his attention on other things. Other things like the warmth and softness of MJ’s hand currently wrapped up in his, the melodic (a description he knows would make MJ wretch) sound of her voice as she tells him about the documentary she watched earlier as he worked out within the confines of their apartment, and the smell of the jasmine fabric softener they used to do their laundry at their last safehouse which had a washer and dryer which wafts from his hoodie that MJ has on.

Focusing on MJ helps to anchor and distract him the way her mere presence always does. Peter wonders about whether he’s starting to develop an unhealthy dependency on her as a coping mechanism but dismisses the thoughts and focuses on MJ’s words instead.

Once they reach the store he’s loathe to let go of her hand and go to one end of the store whilst she goes to the other but they’d agreed to each take half of their small shopping list and grab the items on their respective half themselves — a new plan they’d conceived, once Peter felt up to it, to retain some sense of normalcy in this overwhelmingly abnormal situation.

Peter distractedly reads the shopping list written in MJ’s neat cursive as he makes his way through the store to the back when his attention is caught by the faint sound of the radio playing behind the counter, the words “_Stark Industries_” causing him to pause in his steps and redirect himself to head towards the counter instead.

When he’s a close distance enough away that will allow him to listen easily without having to hone his enhanced senses in on the radio and lose focus of everything else around him, he stops and listens to the professional voice of the radio host.

_“…Stark Industries which has since stopped manufacturing and selling weapons, is caught in hot water over documents that were leaked from an anonymous whistleblower. These documents show how Stark Industries weapons wound up in the hands of various global terrorist organisations, the key named ones being the Taliban and Islamic State. Whether these groups procured Stark Industries weapons directly or indirectly remains unclear but one thing is clear: all eyes are on the dead hero Tony Stark’s company as they fight to clear the corporation’s name at the federal level. The late hero’s widow and former-secretary turned CEO of the company will likely have to appear before a senate committee in due course…”_

Peter feels his heart rate speed up as the air is sucked out of his lungs. Between his rising panic about the situation Stark Industries find themselves in and what this means for their legal team whom up to now he’d been assured and reassured over and over again were working tirelessly to clear his name, and the sudden ringing in his ears, Peter can’t fully make out the rest of what is said on the radio.

He catches bits and pieces, muffled mumbling about a _“vacuum in the tri-state area left by his absence” _and about the _“rising rates”_ of…_something_, he can’t quite make it out as he’s too focused on trying to calm himself down, determined not to have yet another attack when he was just starting to be able to go out to the store like a normal human being.

He starts taking deep calming breaths, in then out, in then out, in then – his routine is interrupted by a familiar weight landing on his shoulder along with a quiet, soft voice speaking out to him helping to pull him above the surface of water he was starting to sink beneath, almost drowning.

When he comes to he can make out the words MJ’s saying to him. “Ben, hey. Do you wanna get the rest of the stuff on our shopping list or just head back?” She asks her question softly and patiently, putting the power in his hands.

Peter shakes his head, an attempt to shake himself out of his stupor, and plasters on a smile that verges on fake on his face before he looks up to face her, doing his best impression of someone that wasn’t about to have a panic attack before he responds. “I’m good, I’m good. We don’t have to leave just yet; I can grab the stuff on my half of the list.”

He watches her bite her lip nervously, clearly considering her words before she speaks. “Do you want me to come with you or wait here?” she asks quietly, nervous.

“Come!” Peter rushes out before catching himself, taking a quick breath then trying again, “Please, come with me.” Then after a pause: “It’d be quicker if it was two of us and I need to be supervised so I pick the right kind of Oreos anyway.”

MJ huffs out a forced laugh at his equally forced joke as she falls into step with him to head to the back of the store where he’d originally been headed before the radio distracted him. There they grab the few items on his list and add them to the basket in MJ’s hands before they shuffle back to the counter to pay.

MJ makes small talk with the cashier as she always does, making up a story about how they’re on a road trip and not for the first time Peter is amazed at how easily she’s able to embody this role of Mary-Jane the friendly, charismatic and sociable college girl who is so unlike Michelle. Peter wonders about how she’s able to play the part so well but thinks about how before he’d become her friend post-blip and gotten to _really_ know her the way being on the run with her has allowed him to, he’d thought of her as mysterious and intense, and borderline intimidating but from knowing her in the way the past few weeks has afforded him he’s realising all of that was an act, a façade of sorts. MJ is actually a good actress.

Peter can now manage a polite “hey” coupled with a smile to the cashiers which is an improvement from his nervous silence of before but he’s not at the level of making full conversation like MJ so usually whilst MJ makes small talk he busies himself with putting their shopping onto the counter for the cashier to scan then he packs it into the reusable bag MJ brings each time.

Except this time when he tries to go through the basket to place their items on the counter to be scanned, MJ stops him by tightening her hold on the basket handle so he can’t take it out of her hands. When he looks up questioningly at her she’s still chatting to the cashier instead of acknowledging him and she steps forward in front of him up to the counter to start placing their items on the counter, blocking his view.

Peter thinks it strange but figures this is maybe a weird comforting thing she’s doing in response to how she had found him earlier when he was meant to be shopping from her list. There are a lot of things MJ is always doing to make him feel better without him even realising or fully understanding so he lets it go and settles on watching her small frame drowned in his hoodie – a sight he’s starting to get used to though it still makes his mouth go as dry as the first time he saw her wearing his clothes.

He’s taken out of his musings by MJ finally bidding the cashier farewell and picking up their shopping off the counter – which he notes is in two reusable bags instead of their usual one this time – and turning towards him so they can head back to the safehouse of the week. He goes to take the two bags from her, trying to make himself useful in some way after yet another disastrous shopping trip, but MJ clutches one of the bags closer to his body and hurriedly hands him the other one before he can question her odd behaviour.

He eyes her questioningly once again and MJ’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly before she recovers and starts telling him about a new vegetarian recipe she found she thought they could try.

It’s a cheap diversion tactic, but even worse it works to distract Peter because before he knows it he’s responding. “What, _now_? It’s nearly midnight,” he says trying to hide his smile.

She rolls her eyes as she simultaneously shifts to grab his hand in hers as they start heading out of the shop. “I obviously didn’t mean right now, dork. I just meant we could try cooking it at some point this week. Maybe tomorrow?”

That leads into a conversation in which they make plans for the rest of their week and MJ effectively distracts him from lingering on her odd behaviour back at the store and what she could be hiding in the bag she holds she so desperately doesn’t want Peter to see.

Thoughts about the news he’d heard on the radio in the store, about Stark Industries’ current legal troubles still linger at the back of his mind, however.

* * *

**Tuesday**

“Peter that tickles, stop,” MJ huffs exasperatedly at him without looking at him, instead focusing on the task at hand as she moves the hair clippers with almost professional accuracy. Her tongue slightly sticks out of the left side of her mouth and her eyebrows are furrowed as she concentrates.

“I’m just trying to support your arms so you don’t get tired!” Peter weakly tries to argue back; he just wanted an excuse to touch her. Then after a beat her words fully register. “Wait, your _elbows_ are ticklish?” He can’t help the menacing grin that breaks out on her face.

“Don’t try to tickle me whilst I’m cutting your hair, you dick,” she says as she finally pauses her actions for a moment, already knowing what he’s thinking and trying to stop him before he can even try. She looks down at him with her eyes narrowed threateningly. “I’ll cut your hair into a mohawk.”

“It’d help with the whole incognito, on the run thing, no?” Peter asks, biting at his lip to stifle a grin.

“You’re not funny,” she retorts.

Peter beams. “You’re doing a good job hiding your smile but I can tell from your eyes you find me a little bit funny, just a little bit.”

At that MJ smiles and tucks her head into her chin shyly then clears her throat a couple of times to recover. “Stop disturbing me,” she says sternly but she smiles bashfully at him before she gets back to work cutting his hair.

They’d spent their day having a picnic on the floor of the living room where they ate sandwiches Peter had made for them in the morning whilst MJ was still asleep along with the snacks from 7-Eleven they’d bought the night before. After eating MJ had busied herself with reading a new novel on her Kindle whilst Peter had had a nap with his head in her lap – her fingers which ran through his hair lulling him to a pleasant sleep unplagued by nightmares the way his sleep usually is, but more so recently.

He doesn’t know how long they’d stayed like that for, it was likely hours because when he’d woken up it was closer to evening time with the apartment being less bright than it had been at midday when the sun was at its peak and shining bright.

When he’d realised how many hours must have passed with his head in MJ’s lap he’d hurriedly got off her with rushed apologies of, “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to lie on your lap for so long. Your legs are probably going numb. Sorry.”

Instead of acknowledging his apologies MJ had looked up from her kindle to face him before she spoke. “You need a haircut,” she’d said, voice matter of fact .

“The long hair could work as my new disguise I think,” Peter had attempted to joke. He didn’t actually want to grow out his hair, he’d had the same haircut (and hair colour) for almost all his life and the blonde was enough of an adjustment but it was fun to mess with MJ just to see her struggle to hold in her clear amusement at his words and try to remain impassive.

“If I don’t cut your hair you’ll end up looking like the western interpretation of Jesus.”

“You- you’re gonna cut my hair for me?” Peter had asked, surprised.

MJ had just rolled her eyes. “Who else is gonna do it, loser.”

That conversation from the afternoon is the reason Peter finds himself perched on a chair taken from the kitchen in the middle of the living room, coffee table moved away to make space, as MJ works to trim his hair to a pre-agreed length. They sit in silence as she works with the only sounds in their immediate vicinity being their quiet breathing and the clippers cutting his hair followed by the sound of locks of his hair softly hitting the floor.

He goes to place his hands on her elbows again before remembering her threat then placing his hands down in his lap. He’s mostly certain that MJ was joking about giving him a mohawk, but you never know.

They stay like that for a while longer then MJ finally stops and exhales loudly, clearly tired from the effort, before she takes a slight step away from him. “All done,” she murmurs quietly, like she’s nervous about what his reaction will be.

Peter responds by getting up from his chair and standing so he can press a lingering kiss to her lips. He pulls away slightly then mumbles a quiet, appreciative, “Thanks,” against her lips.

She rolls her eyes in a way Peter now knows with certainty is fond. “You haven’t even seen the haircut, loser.”

“Don’t need to,” he counters easily.

“We’ll see if you still think that when you catch your reflection in the bathroom mirror and realise I kept my promise of giving you a mohawk,” she says with a wide grin.

Peter shakes his head at her. “I’ll go check later.” Then after a brief moment, “Why don’t you go take a quick nap whilst I clean up here then cook our dinner.”

“What a domestic goddess,” MJ jokes, all snark. “Thank you,” she adds, this time quieter and softer. She presses a quick kiss against his lips then walks around him, taking care not to step on his hair, to head to the bedroom.

He watches after her and she gives him a quick smile before she closes the bedroom door behind her. He then busies himself with sweeping away all of his hair then going over the living room floor with the vacuum cleaner before he moves the chair back to the kitchen where he makes a Thai green curry – one of MJ’s favorite dishes he’s been working on perfecting.

When he’s done he goes to wake MJ up from her nap and she protests telling him to give her “five more minutes” then when that doesn’t work, trying to pull him onto the bed to lie down with her.

Eventually he finally gets her up and out of bed then they head to the kitchen where he’s set the table up. When she sees what he’s made she looks at him with a beaming grin and shyly thanks him before they settle on the two-person table and eat, making small talk as they do.

Afterwards, MJ insists that she does the dishes so she does so whilst Peter watches her as they continue to chat. Then when she’s done they move to the small couch and cuddle up with episodes of Clone Wars cued up (MJ had admitted to him she had never seen anything Star Wars-related back when they’d first left New York and Peter has since made it his mission to introduce her to all of it, films, shows, _all of it_).

It’s nice and distracting to watch episodes of one of his favorite shows and feel the soft press of MJ’s body pressed against his as they cuddle.

It’s nice and distracting when they complete their usual night time routine of MJ going to the bathroom to change into her pajamas, brush her teeth and do her skincare routine whilst Peter goes through scrubbing any potential CCTV footage of the two of them using E.D.I.T.H. as well as ensuring all the doors and windows are locked before he heads to the bathroom to change into his sleep wear, brush his teeth and do his own skincare routine (using MJ’s products).

They wind up in bed, legs tangled together as MJ rests her head on his bare chest, whispering words that are only meant for the other to hear. Peter tells her about how much he still misses Ben and MJ tells him about her absentee dad and how he likely still won’t have noticed his daughter’s absence weeks on. Bit by bit she’s been revealing more about her background and home life, and though his heart breaks to hear about her home life and the loss she has suffered, Peter feels so grateful that she’s trusting him with this.

Saying “goodnight” around a muffled yawn, MJ eventually falls asleep sometime later leaving Peter awake by himself with nothing but his thoughts. Without the distraction of doing things with MJ, of trying to entertain her and not make this so awful for her as he’s been trying to do for the past however many weeks its been since they went on the run, the thoughts about everything they ran away from and about the news of what’s happening with Stark Industries that he’d pushed to the back of his mind to allow him to focus on MJ shifts to the forefront of his mind.

He’s felt helpless since the first time he’d heard J. Jonah Jameson’s grating voice reveal his identity on national television and accuse him of murdering Quentin Beck but those around him had done their best to reassure him this would be over soon. MJ by just being MJ and being here with him even though she didn’t need to. Happy and May through their bi-weekly phone calls to the pair, both reassuring him that Stark Industries’ very good lawyers were working tirelessly to prove he was being set up and clear his name.

It’s the latter Peter’s mind goes back to now. Stark Industries is facing a senate committee over supposed evidence they sold weapons of mass destruction to organisations branded terrorists by the U.S. government, they’ll be occupied and too busy to focus on little Peter Parker. He gets it though; the entire company’s livelihood is on the line with all this meaning his stuff will have to wait. But Peter doesn’t know how long he can wait. How long he can keep running and hiding, hiding away from the authorities and from the responsibility he has because he has these powers and abilities no one else has. How long can _MJ _wait?

Peter worries his lip as his thoughts cycle through some variation of those questions for a stretch of time as he waits for MJ to fall into a deeper sleep. Once he’s certain she’s properly asleep – her breathing has slowed and evened out tellingly and her body is completely relaxed, easy for him to move off him – he quietly climbs out of the bed and pads out of the bedroom.

He heads to the living room where he busies himself with re-checking that the door and all the windows are shut and locked though he’d done so just a couple of hours ago, then he does so again and a fourth time just for good measure, for ease of mind.

After that he still feels too wired and keyed up to go back to bed so he moves the coffee table to make space then does as many push ups as his body will allow him, it could be hundreds or thousands he’s not sure, he just carries on until he feels his muscles tire and he feels spent in a welcome way.

He gets up off the floor and moves the table back to its original position and is about to head off to the bedroom so he can climb back into bed with MJ but he stops, looks at the TV momentarily. Then before he knows it he’s settling on the couch with the TV remote in hand to switch it on. He takes care to put it on mute and turn subtitles on as soon as it switches on so as to not make noise and potentially wake MJ; he knows she’s a fairly heavy sleeper and is unlikely to be woken up, but he wants to be sure.

He channel surfs for a while, mindlessly browsing in search of something to watch. Except, he’s not really _searching_ for something to watch, he’s just putting on the pretence of searching when deep down he knows exactly what he wants to watch and why he sat down and put the TV on, but channel surfing can allow him to lie to himself that his actions weren’t intentional, that he’d just stumbled upon the news channel rather than sought it out.

He watches some local news stories that play for a while, just _waiting_. Then, finally, the news shifts to what’s happening in New York. He intently reads the subtitles that tell him about how there’d been a file dump equal to that orchestrated by Natasha Romanoff years ago now, with files detailing all the weapons dealings of Stark Industries. The subtitles tell him how the file dump wasn’t a one and done, how files are constantly being made available to the public on a near-daily basis from this anonymous source , all of them increasingly incriminating and effectively overwhelming Stark Industries.

Peter sags, feeling weary. Part of him had hoped that maybe he’d conjured up the news of Stark Industries’ troubles in paranoid mind, or that maybe since he first heard the news everything would have been resolved with Stark Industries proving they were not involved in shady weapons dealings. The latter didn’t seem so far-fetched, Tony is always great at last minute ingenious resolutions to save the day.

_Oh_.

He realises he used the present tense- _is, _but Tony is no longer here.

The memory causes a weight to settle heavily at the pit of his stomach as he remembers the man is no longer here, almost having forgotten just for a brief moment, as he swallows around the lump that’s suddenly formed around his throat.

Peter shakes the dark thoughts out of his head and looks up to focus on the news which has fortunately moved on from talking about Stark Industries. Unfortunately, the news shifts to reporting on crime where from reading the subtitles he learns about how there’s been an increase in crime rates in the tri-state area and a string of high profile crimes.

One of the news anchors theorises that all of this is because of a vacuum left by the absence of Avengers and by the absence of Spider-Man specifically. Another argues that it’s because the police are overwhelmed, under-resourced since the chaos of the blip hasn’t fully settled yet.

That causes an argument to break out about how the police force has more man power with the return of previously deceased officers and they should be able to deal with the increase in crime but Peter isn’t fully paying attention, the previous niggling feeling about how he ran away from his responsibility and the things that can happen when he doesn’t use his powers growing in intensity.

Ben’s words about the responsibility that comes with great power ring out in his head over and over again, a cruel taunt. Peter doesn’t even realise how hard he’s squeezing the TV remote that’s remained in his hand this entire time, too consumed by his guilt and shame, until his attention is drawn to the sound of MJ moving around and getting out of bed in the other room.

He pushes his self-flagellation to the side and rushes to change the TV channel to a random channel playing reruns of some procedural drama and places the remote down on the coffee table in front of him just as MJ walks out of the bedroom into the living area.

It’s dark with nothing but the faint glow of the TV to light the space but he can make out all of MJ, face twisted in confusion as she rubs at her eyes with one hand and muffles a yawn with the other. She comes and sits right next to him, her bare legs which are in small sleep shorts pressed up against his and though he has pajama pants on, he can feel the warmth of MJ’s bare skin pressed against him so acutely.

“Hey, couldn’t sleep?” She asks it in a whisper, voice low and soft the way it is whenever they talk and share secrets in the dark before bed.

Peter tentatively brings a hand to rest lightly on her knee, barely applying any pressure to it but needing to make as much contact with her as possible to calm his residual nerves. He exhales loudly, a small sense of relief flooding him as he feels himself relax some with his jaw unclenching as soon as his hand makes contact with the soft skin of her knee. Finally he can respond, “Yeah, sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment so he turns to her and she’s facing away from him at the TV so most of what he sees is her side profile backlit by the glare of the TV, but he can also make out the way she worries her lip between her teeth which he knows means she’s considering her words and actions. “Do you wanna talk about it?” She finally asks.

Peter holds his breath at her question. Part of him wants to tell her so badly but then he wasn’t even supposed to be watching the news anyway, they had agreed it was for the best that he avoid keeping track of the news. And it wouldn’t do anything but worry her as well which she doesn’t need. There’s nothing they can do.

“Um, no,” he gets out quietly. “Sorry,” he adds, voice impossibly quieter.

MJ sighs almost disappointedly and Peter’s heart constricts in his chest. He moves his hand up her leg from her knee, just an inch or so he can rest it palm down then he rubs gently. He repeats: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” MJ responds quietly, still not facing him. They stay like that, his hand resting on her thigh just above her knee as he watches her whilst MJ watches the silent TV. Finally she turns to face him and offers him a small, barely there smile. “Let's go back to bed.”

Peter offers her an equally small smile in response then nods his head before reaching forward for the remote to switch the TV off with one hand whilst his other one still rests on her thigh. He’s finally forced to let go of her when she gets up off the couch and the loss of contact causes a twinge of hurt but she’s reaching down to grab his hand and pull him up before it can grow.

As he walks with MJ hand-in-hand back to bed all Peter can think about is how the Stark Industries legal team can’t save him, and New York can’t save itself.

* * *

**Wednesday**

When Peter wakes up, the first thing he’s aware of is MJ – the softness of her skin that his face is pressed up against, the scent of her. Then he becomes aware of how weary he feels, still exhausted even though the sun which shines into the room even behind his closed eyelids tells him it’s at least mid-morning and he’s slept in.

He hadn’t been able to sleep all that well, his sleep fitful and plagued by nightmares that were a mixture of his anxieties about abandoning his responsibility as Spider-Man and the sense of shame he feels about not taking responsibility the way Ben and May had always taught him to do.

The worst of his nightmares had been of all the people he’s encountered as Spider-Man over his brief stint, from the notable people like Quentin Beck to even the lower level robbers and thieves, all banding together over their shared hatred of the masked superhero they now knew to be Peter Parker to exact revenge. The nightmare had climaxed with Adrian Toomes, the _Vulture_, snatching May and soaring up high with her in the clutches of his metallic claws only to drop her into the Hudson, her body sinking to the surface and never coming back up all the while Peter watched unable to move and go help her.

He’s still feeling shaken by the nightmare despite knowing it wasn’t real and he’s unable to shake off the unease it’s caused within him as he finally opens his eyes to face the real world. When he does he finds that he was asleep with his head resting in MJ’s lap, faced pressed up against her thighs and arms wrapped around her legs like he was subconsciously trying to keep her in his hold even in his sleep.

Peter untangles himself from her and sits up in the bed. MJ’s sitting with her back resting against the headboard, reading from a Kindle she holds in one hand whilst she sips from a mug she holds in her other hand. She looks the picture of calm and serene helping to pull him back to reality, pushing the lingering ghost of his nightmare away for the time being.

“Oh, _thank God_. I can finally go pee.” Is the first things she says to him.

He startles. “W-what? Why didn’t you wake me up and tell me to get off you? Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he apologises frantically, feeling embarrassed that he’d been holding her so tightly whilst he slept that she couldn’t get out of bed.

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just calmly places her Kindle and mug on the bedside table. Then finally after what feels like an eternity: “I am messing with you. You’re so easy.”

Peter sags in relief. “I hate you.” He reaches a hand out to hold hers in his then places their joined hands in his lap over the sheets. “No I don’t,” he decides.

“No you don’t,” she affirms with an easy shrug but she gives him a reserved smile.

Because he can’t help it, he leans forward to press his lips against hers in a gentle kiss. All too quickly, he pulls away but doesn’t put much distance between them, just lingers close by with their faces close together.

“You haven’t brushed your teeth,” she whispers, warm puffs of air she lets out as she speaks brushing against his face.

“Sorry,” he starts to apologize sheepishly but MJ leans forward to re-connect their lips before he can say more.

They continue kissing, alternating between gentle barely there pecks, to deeper kisses where he licks past her lips. At some point they move from their sitting position to laying down on their sides facing each other, lips still connected and Peter’s hand resting in the dip of her waist with his palm resting over his t-shirt she’s taken to wearing. They’re getting pretty good at this making out thing, Peter offhandedly thinks before MJ moans, low and subdued, the sound ridding his mind of any thoughts that aren’t MJ – the taste of the coffee she was sipping on that sits forgotten on the side table on her tongue, the soft press of her lips against his, and the way she runs her tongue over his.

They kiss until his lips are bruised and he can’t catch his breath then eventually they pull away both panting and smiling giddily at the other. Neither makes a move to immediately get out of bed, staying where they are laying on their sides quietly talking amongst themselves with Peter’s hand still resting on her waist over the cotton of her t-shirt.

Besides some time spent re-dyeing his hair back to blond, the whole day is spent mostly in bed just talking, and he also has MJ read aloud to him as he rests his head in her lap, his favorite position to be in, and in between all that they have snacks they grab from the kitchen (MJ ensures they grab snacks that have the lowest chance of leaving crumbs in the bed). And in between all of that they steal kisses when the urge arises.

Though getting to spend time with MJ like this is all he’s gotten to do for the duration of time they’ve been on the run going from S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse to safehouse, the novelty of it still hasn’t worn off and likely _never_ will. It’s as pleasant as ever to spend the day with MJ like this and it almost helps to distract him from everything with Stark Industries and the rise in crime rates and his nightmares about Spider-Man’s enemies getting to his loved ones he left in New York…_almost._

The thoughts still linger at the back of his mind though he tries his best to push them away and focus on the words MJ reads to him.

He tries his best to focus on MJ and to be present as they hang out in their bed and when they eventually, begrudgingly, get out of bed when they’re hungry for a proper cooked meal not just the unhealthy snacks they’ve been eating all day but it barely works. He has unbidden thoughts about the people he put away going after May and Ned and even Flash whilst he’s here hidden away in New Jersey of all places - so close, yet so far - playing house with his girlfriend.

He can’t shake his sense of restlessness, the same restlessness that’s been present over the last couple of months they’ve been on the run and has gradually been worsening, as him and MJ cook dinner together. As they eat dinner together on the two-person table he tries his best to listen to what MJ is saying to him but his mind is still stuck in that same loop. And it stays stuck as they do the dishes with MJ washing and him drying then when they watch TV.

If MJ notices how distracted and distant he is, she doesn’t comment on it.

When they wind up back in bed they don’t whisper secrets to each other in the dark the way they always do, they just lie in bed wordlessly until MJ falls asleep, leaving him wide awake, mind still consumed with paranoid thoughts about what could be happening in New York.

He tosses and turns several times and sometimes he just watches MJ sleep peacefully but he is unable to sleep and unable to stay still.

When staying in bed becomes unbearable he finally makes a rash decision, a _stupid_ decision. He gets out of bed and he changes out of pajamas into black sweatpants, a black t-shirt and a black hoodie then completes the look with a black scarf belonging to MJ. He empties out his backpack apart from his wallet which has some cash in it, grabs the E.D.I.T.H. glasses and shoves them into it then heads for the door.

He wraps his hand around the doorknob then looks back to check that MJ is still soundly asleep and momentarily gets distracted by the sight of her fast asleep, clutching the pillow tightly in her hands with her mouth slightly parted before he shakes himself out of his daze and sneaks out of the bedroom, taking care to quietly close the door behind him.

From there he heads to the cupboard with the small arsenal of weapons in the kitchen, the one he knows MJ avoids and has avoided in each safehouse they’ve stayed in because it makes her uncomfortable, and in there he fishes out the two vials of web fluid he snuck at the bottom of his backpack on the night they left New York that he has been hiding from MJ since. He packs them into his backpack too, along with the set of keys that sit on the kitchen table then goes for his shoes by the front door.

He pauses briefly, hesitant, head turning in the direction of the closed bedroom door just for a moment as he considers put everything away, changing back into his pajamas and climbing back into bed into MJ's warm embrace.

_No_. He needs to go. He needs to do this.

Decision made; he quietly leaves the apartment.

* * *

**Thursday**

It’s the early hours of Thursday morning meaning it’s relatively empty outside but Peter still puts his hood over his head as he makes his way to the train station hurriedly so he can catch the last transit train.

He gets to the train station and belatedly decides not to buy a ticket and ride the train, his paranoia over having to interact with people and all the cameras that could capture footage of him making him reconsider. Instead he sneaks around to the platforms and climbs on top of a train headed for Penn Station, perching on the roof of the train.

It takes less than an hour until he’s back in the city for the first time in weeks and he wants to take the time to just sit and take in his home that he hadn’t realised how much he'd missed since leaving but swiftly reminds himself that that’s not what he’s here for, that he’s still a fugitive and shouldn’t even be back in the city. He quickly ties MJ’s scarf around the bottom half of his face in some pathetic attempt to conceal his identity as best as he can then swings off the moving train.

He lands in a random alleyway and makes the rest of his journey by foot to save web fluid since he only has two vials total and he wants to draw as little attention to himself as possible and Spider-Man being seen swinging around the city would do the exact opposite of that.

The first place he heads to is home, his and May’s small Queens two-bed apartment. He goes via the back alleyway near their building that he’d always use whenever he went out as Spider-Man, an unpleasant ache twisting in his chest at the memory, and climbs up the side of the building up to his bedroom window.

He’s able to slide the window open then he climbs into the apartment, which is completely dark and quiet, empty of life. The light of a billboard nearby shines through his open blinds and illuminates his room in artificial light with streaks of red and blue shining across his room which allow him to see the chaos before him.

The contents of his closet and all the drawers in the room have been seemingly turned inside out, like someone was looking for something which makes his stomach turn. He slowly makes his way through the apartment, heart pumping loudly in his chest, and sees more of the same. There’s furniture turned upside down, papers and books strewn everywhere, again like someone was looking for something.

Peter doesn’t need to further inspect the apartment, he just knows his home had been ransacked likely by people looking to hurt Spider-Man, to hurt _him_, and his loved ones.

Before he knows it he’s climbing back out of his window and swinging to Happy’s apartment, not caring that he’d told himself he wouldn’t swing unless absolutely necessary to not draw attention to himself or use up too much webbing, his fear for May’s safety being all he is thinking about. He needs to go and see that she’s safe, needs to see her with his own two eyes consequences be damned. He also worries about Ned and his family, but he knows with it'd be hard for him to go and check in on their Leeds' family home with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents constantly watching over it.

Sheer adrenaline and fear fuels him as he makes his way across boroughs until he gets to Happy’s building and climbs up to where he remembers Happy’s apartment to be, at which point he realises he didn’t really think this through. How is he going to confirm May’s well being without alerting them to the fact that he’d done something reckless and stupid and come back to the city?

He luckily finds the blinds of one of the windows of Happy’s apartment open, the ones to his bedroom in fact, allowing him to look in and see Happy and May lying on the bed fast asleep and none the wiser to his presence. He breathes a sigh of relief then makes his way back to the ground.

He lands on the ground with a weary thud, the realisation of just how stupid and reckless it was for him to come back here hitting him with full force now that the fear and adrenaline that had driven him to come back to the city has worn off. He allowed his unfounded fears and paranoia to get the better of him instead of using his common sense to call and check in on May. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

Feeling regretful, Peter makes his way away from Happy’s building, headed in the vague direction of a nearby bus terminal.

He walks through the city, doing his best to not draw any attention to himself as he thinks about how stupid he’s been and how he’s likely endangered May, Ned and MJ because of his impulsive actions. He’d gotten himself into this mess to begin with, trusting Mysterio – a man he didn’t even know – so easily because he’d been desperate for the guidance and mentorship he offered in a world where Tony Stark was gone and the Avengers were no more and he faced immense pressure to be something he wasn’t, something he couldn’t be, to fill that gap and reassure people who were afraid after Thanos.

His naivety had lead to his identity being exposed to the world. And now his stupidity has put them in further hot water. He really couldn’t do anything right.

It’s as he’s dejectedly making his way through the city, head consumed with thoughts of how he isn’t and will never be good enough and doesn’t deserve the powers that were bestowed upon him by fate and the deranged experiments of OsCorp that he comes across a group of four men circling a woman who is by herself.

He almost keeps walking, thoughts about how he does more harm than good still ringing out in his head but they become drowned out by Ben’s voice, a memory of something he’d said to him when he was just ten years old suddenly coming to mind.

He remembers that it was Thanksgiving and Peter was pouting, annoyed that they were leaving the house with all the food Ben had spent all of last night preparing that was now packed into various boxes and trays. The then young Peter didn’t understand why they weren’t just sitting down to eat the food like a normal family instead of taking all the food to the nearby homeless shelter so Ben had put the bags with the boxes of food he had in his hands down and crouched in front of Peter, getting down to his level before he explained plainly and simply to him that it was important to help those in need if you had the means to do so.

With those words in mind, Peter exhales audibly and jogs across the street towards where the commotion is.

“Fellas, I think it’s time you all head home, no?” Peter asks to announce his presence.

The men turn to where the voice originated from, give him a quick once-over and all collectively scoff out a laugh before turning back to the woman.

Peter almost rolls his eyes. This is familiar.

He walks closer to allow him to tap one the guys on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir?”

The guy is in the process of turning his body to face him, likely to tell him to go away in more colourful terms, when Peter hits him with a right cross that knocks the guy out cold straight away.

That finally gets the men to leave the woman alone as they turn their full attention to him. Typical. “I said—” Peter starts, addressing the men who are now coming to surround him. “I think it’s time you all headed home.”

They look at him wordlessly then turn to look at each other and nothing happens for a moment before they suddenly all lunge at him simultaneously (part of him wishes they'd come at him one by one like bad guys do in the movies because he's out of practice with hand-to-hand combat, it's been a while, sue him.

Peter leaps up and over one of the men, narrowly escaping his grab. When he lands on the other side of him, no longer encircled by the men completely, he starts working through the men and taking out each man one by one throwing right hooks and kicks here and there.

The men are easy to dispatch of, just drunk creeps with no fighting skills of any sort, so he has them all lying on the ground either knocked out or clutching parts of themselves groaning in pain within mere minutes. He takes a deep breath in and out and cracks his neck, hands throbbing and slightly out of breath from the exertion but overall feeling satisfied, _alive_ in a way he hasn’t in a while.

When one of the men seems like he's attempting to get up and make a run for it, Peter quickly webs him to the nearby wall he was leant on without even thinking about it.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” The woman he hadn’t realised was still there rushes out over and over again in tears, bringing him back to the ground.

“Shit,” Peter murmurs to himself, the realisation that he’d done the exact opposite of what he intended to, of what May, Happy and MJ have been telling him to do over and over again over the past few weeks hitting him. He’d drawn attention to himself.

He doesn’t respond to the woman’s thanks, just turns and runs away as fast as he can.

He runs and runs, and keeps running until he finds himself by the interstate freeway at which point he finally stops running.

He jumps over the edge of the bridge he’s on onto an oncoming truck, doing his best to land as quietly as he can onto the roof before collapsing so he’s in a lying position once he’s taken his backpack off his back.

He takes a moment to catch his breath and try to calm himself down; the feelings of regret over his impulsive decision to go to New York and the way he’d likely exposed himself in direct conflict with the feelings of satisfaction and that high of being Spider-Man, of getting to help someone after so long in hiding, leaving him feeling torn and exhausted.

He stays on the truck until it drives through Trenton, not too far from where the S.H.I.E.L.D. apartment is located, at which point he gets off the truck and makes the rest of his journey by foot.

It’s a further twenty minutes before he arrives at the apartment building then makes his way up to the second floor apartment him and MJ have been staying at for nearly a week now. He quietly lets himself in with the key then quietly closes the door again then turns to walk into the apartment fully but pauses when he looks across the small space of the open living area and sees MJ standing by the small table they eat their meals together, looking at him with a mixture of fear, anger and hurt.

Peter crosses the small space so he’s standing closer to her, chest heaving and blood thrumming beneath his skin from the residual adrenaline of the night’s events. He quickly scans the table and notes the things scattered over it, flour, sugar, butter, eggs and one of those tubs of pre-made cake frosting.

He realises they’re ingredients for a cake at the same time he remembers what the date is, remembers that it’s nearly 4am and officially his 17th birthday.

MJ looks at him, eyes probing and speaks. “_What did you do?_”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My British ignorance over American geography aside, I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. Comments and kudos are much appreciated!
> 
> Happy new year and new decade to you all!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


	5. Chapter 5

“_What did you do?_”

The words hang heavily in the air that surrounds them, time seeming to slow and stretch the moment so it feels as if the two of them stand there for hours— no, _days_, even. Neither moves, MJ stays by the small kitchen table watching him with probing eyes whilst Peter stays where he is in the juncture between the living area and the kitchen.

Peter’s heightened senses zero in on MJ: the furrow of her brow—angry? annoyed? confused?—seemingly at odds with her eyes— open, disappointed, _sad_.

“Peter,” MJ’s whispered words, a plea, feel like a shout in the way they startle him and bring him back to the present moment, back to what he has done.

“I—” He hesitates, tries to come up with an explanation succinct enough to both explain his reasoning to MJ and make her understand his burden of responsibility, and to scrub away the expression of disappointment that mars her face; it’s an expression he has been on the receiving end of before a few times when he’d either have to leave decathlon practice 20 minutes early or miss it entirely when he got a crime alert on his phone. The disappointment she watches him with now feels different though, heavier, more stifling.

Eventually he settles on three simple words, “I’m sorry, MJ.”

MJ snorts but it is distinctly lacking any humour. “What are you sorry for, Peter?” Her eyebrows rise expectantly and Peter almost goes to respond but she carries on before he can. “For going behind my back and leaving me here? For exposing yourself…_us_? For doing something stupid? For not keeping your word?”

There is an underlying current of anger to her voice as she fires off each question one after the other in rapid succession, not giving him time to respond even if he knew how to respond. Happiness, joy, annoyance, sadness, pleasure, pain; Peter has seen or been on the receiving end of all of— or so he thought— her expressions and moods, the anger is new though. A deep sense of shame and regret settles within him.

Peter is generally someone that talks non-stop, loves filling any silences, but now he finds himself speechless, unable to find the words to express the immense regret he feels.

“_What are you sorry for, Peter_?!” MJ repeats again, this time her volume louder and tone more forceful. As she speaks she throws her arms out, accidentally knocking over the open pack of flour which was sat near the edge of the kitchen table on her right. “Shit,” she says, volume back to being barely audible, before she crouches down to try and clean up the mess the flour created because they were both too slow to stop it falling onto the kitchen floor.

Peter hesitates momentarily then takes his backpack off his back, placing it on the floor before he takes a couple of steps across the small space between them to try and help her, or at least to stop her painstakingly scooping the flour off the floor with her hands.

“Here, let me clean it up,” he offers, his hands coming to rest on top of her hands.

“Where did you even go?” She whispers, voice only audible because of his enhanced senses, her eyes still focused on the flour in her hands.

He clears his throat, momentarily considers lying to her before immediately dismissing the idea, then, “_Home_. I went back to New York.”

MJ exhales loudly and she sounds dejected and the disappointment from before is still very much present. “God, Peter,” is all she says before she releases the flour she was clutching in her hands, allowing it to fall back onto the ground, creating more of a mess than before.

She shrugs his hands off where they were lightly resting atop hers then gets up from the floor and pads to the living area, dusting the flour off her hands on her pajama shorts as she goes. For a while she doesn’t say anything, just paces up and down by the floor space behind the small couch. Something which unsettles him, MJ doesn’t _pace_.

“What were you thinking Peter?” And this time when she speaks there is no longer anger and disappointment just defeat and dejection, like someone who is at an impasse, who has considered every possibility and cannot come up with an answer or an explanation themselves.

Peter considers going up to her and holding her hand, just any sort of contact but instead decides to go and stand on the other side of the couch.

MJ has finally stopped pacing and stands in one spot now, so Peter stands directly opposite her before talking to her. “I don’t know, I just— I’ve been feeling so restless and like I was abandoning my responsibility for so long then I heard on the news about Stark Industries, and the crime rates going up and I—” He pauses to take a breath before continuing, “I don’t know, something has been gnawing at me this whole time and I just had to go home and check on May, check that she was safe and nothing had happened to her because of, because of _me_.”

“Peter there are people working tirelessly right now to try and help you; why couldn’t you just let them help you? Why do you never let anyone help you?”

“Because it’s my fault!” Peter startles both himself and MJ with his sudden outburst. “It’s _all_ my fault,” he says, voice much quieter this time. “Ben, Tony, Mysterio, this—this _thing_ we’ve been doing at playing house when we’re only fucking teenagers. It’s all my fault. When you can do the things that I can but you don’t and bad things happen, they happen because of you.”

“Peter…” MJ starts to say, tone softer and sympathetic than it’s been all night.

But once Peter has started he finds that he can’t stop. “I have these abilities and instead of using them to help people the way I vowed I would after Ben, I’ve just been sitting here. _Hiding_ away from everything and everyone I care about, and letting other people clean up my own messes.”

Something shifts in MJ. “I’m here Peter! I’ve been here with you all along.”

“No, Em, that’s not what I—”

“I don’t have much, no one who’s been worried sick about me but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to give up anything to be here. But I chose to be here, to be with you because I care about you and so does May, and Happy, Ned and even fucking Flash. You have people around you who care about you and want to help you.” She pauses to take a deep breath in and out to compose herself and try to quell the slight wobble of her chin. “It’s like you said, we’re fucking teenagers. You shouldn’t have to take on the world by yourself, it’s okay to want help. Let people be there for you, Peter.”

Peter isn’t sure if it’s finally laying everything out of the table or if it’s MJ’s assured tone, but something in him breaks and he finds himself collapsing unceremoniously onto the couch and he just, _cries_.

Without him realising she’d walked around the couch, MJ comes to sit down next to him and she tucks him against her side and holds him so close that he feels the way her own body shakes slightly, presumably also crying.

They stay like that for a while, wrapped up in each other and just letting it all out.

Eventually they end up lying on the couch, Peter on his back whilst MJ is lying almost entirely over him and that’s when Peter chooses to break the silence. “You know, I’ve been so focused on what’s happening in New York that I forgot it was even my birthday today.”

MJ lets out a half-amused huff which Peter feels against his neck where her face is tucked. “Happy birthday, Peter,” she whispers before pressing a quick peck to his neck.

He wraps his arms impossibly tighter around her, takes a deep inhale of the conditioner she has in her hair and allows the smell to calm his insides. “Were you, um, were you gonna make me a cake?”

“Yeah, it’s stupid,” she responds shyly. “I’d set an alarm and everything so I could wake up and make it so it was ready to surprise you with in the morning.” Peter’s heart swells at the thoughtfulness. “But then you weren’t here and, I think I was in denial but at first I thought maybe you’d just gone out for a jog or something because I know how restless you’ve been, with the constant push ups and always checking and re-checking the locks so I decided to start on the cake anyway. But I couldn’t shake off this feeling, this w_orry _that something had gone horribly wrong.”

And the weight of what Peter has done comes rushing back to him, the guilt and shame washes over him once more. All he can do is stumble out a teary “I’m so, so sorry” over and over again. He never meant to worry or disappoint MJ, never meant to endanger her with his stupidity and impulsiveness.

MJ lifts her head off his chest and starts gently shushing him, trying to calm him down. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she keeps repeating, punctuating the words by pressing kisses all over his face— his forehead, each of his cheeks, the tip of is nose then his lips.

She keeps going, reassuring him with her words and her kisses, until he eventually calms down. And they will likely have to deal with the consequences of what he did tonight and there’s so much more they need to talk about because he hasn’t been entirely honest and open with her, but as the sun starts to rise outside with the early hour of the morning, the two of them fall asleep there on the little safehouse couch that barely fits one person much less two, completely wrapped up in each other.

Peter decides the rest can wait.

* * *

When Peter’s eyes flutter open what can’t be more than a handful of hours later, the first thing he is aware of is MJ’s presence, the way he always is. There is a crick in his neck from the awkward position it’d been in when they fell asleep on this couch clearly not meant for sleeping on and he doesn’t feel like he has rested at all, but all of it fades to insignificance at the comforting weight of MJ lying entirely on top of him, body uncomfortably folded so she fits as best as she can.

He doesn’t get the chance to watch her the way he usually does the few times he wakes up before her because his attention is stolen by MJ’s phone which sits on the coffee table vibrating loudly.

The vibrations against wood startle MJ awake who almost jumps up off him then, after taking a brief moment to stretch her likely sore muscles given how they’d slept, picks up her phone and answers it.

There’s a brief moment where MJ doesn’t say anything and only listens to the person on the other end of the phone and Peter consciously makes an effort to not use his heightened senses to eavesdrop on the phone conversation, instead focusing his attention on anything else he can.

His attention is drawn back to MJ when she gets out a shocked, “Wait, _what_?”

She turns to briefly look at him where he is still lying on the couch, clearly trying to school her features but Peter doesn’t miss the way her eyes momentarily widen, before she turns away and scrambles to grab the TV remote to turn the television on and put it on a NEWS channel.

Peter turns to also watch the TV and immediately regrets doing so— immediately regrets even waking up, in fact—though living in blissful ignorance wouldn’t have changed what is happening. Because currently on the small TV screen is a face he detests but has unfortunately become all too familiar with over the last few months; the face of J Jonah Jameson.

The NEWS report shows a grainy, but unmistakeable, image of a man dressed in all black swinging between the skyscrapers of New York. As if the image wasn’t damning enough, Jameson tells of how an anonymous source from a local ER, because of course The Daily Bugle has healthcare staff on their payroll just to get an exclusive, had told them of how four men stumbled into the ER all telling the same story about how the wanted murderer and terrorist Spider-Man had beat them all up for no reason (ha!).

Jameson goes on to report with a worrying level of glee how he knew that it’d be a matter of time before that menace Spider-Man showed his face again, something nonsensical about how a murderer always goes back to the scene of the crime along with information about how this Bugle exclusive story will likely mean efforts to capture Spider-Man will be renewed, the manhunt rejuvenated.

Peter barely hears the rest of it though, his thundering heart and ringing ears all being far louder than the television. As his heart races, his palms start to get sweaty and his mouth goes dry, and there’s a part of him that has become all too familiar with these symptoms to know that he’s on the verge of a panic attack but that awareness does little to stop the attack in its tracks. How could he have been so stupid? So reckless? So _selfish_?

“Peter? Peter?” MJ draws his attention back to her, calming him minutely but not completely stopping his rising panic either. “Peter I’m sorry, I know this isn’t what you need right now, but we need to go. Okay?” Her voice is soft, gentle but also firm. Final.

He nods wordlessly, still finding himself unable to form actual words or even just sounds.

“Okay, okay,” MJ says quietly, more to herself than anything. From having spent time closely studying her Peter knows that she’s scared and panicking, but is trying her best to calm down and think logically and plan out their next move. “We need to go,” she repeats after a beat, this time more assured and getting up off the couch as she says so.

Peter uselessly follows after her to the bedroom where he watches as she grabs her military style backpack and starts haphazardly stuffing all her belongings into it momentarily before he realises that he should probably be doing the same thing. So he goes back out to the living area to grab his abandoned backpack then comes back to similarly pack up what he can.

They don’t exchange many words as they go through the process of clearing house, packing up all of their personal belongings as best as they can in relative silence for which Peter is grateful because his mind is still in overdrive, both trying to process what is happening right now and also trying to deal with the immense guilt and regret he feels. The guilt and regret usually resides in the background but now it has been brought to the forefront, consuming his thoughts so acutely that all he can do is work on autopilot to copy MJ’s actions and help with packing.

MJ takes the time to change out of her pajamas into regular clothes then the two of them head out of the apartment they’d barely made it to a week of living in before Peter blew up their shit.

From the apartment they head by foot to the nearest bus station, and if Peter wasn’t still in a state of near panic about everything he likely would take the time to feel perturbed by the fact that they are walking out in public in broad daylight rather than under the cover of darkness in the early hours of the morning the way they usually do when going to the store or moving to a different safehouse for the first time since J Jonah Jameson ruined his life (the first time).

Instead he just focuses on trying to calm himself down, the warmth of MJ’s hand which is wrapped around his own as she almost has to drag him along after her being somewhat of an anchoring presence that means he doesn’t sink too far down.

He has mostly got himself under control and has retained focus back on the situation at hand by the time they are nearing the train station, enough so that he suddenly pauses in his tracks and because of their adjoined hands, causes MJ to stop with him too. She turns to face him and he can tell from the way her leg shakes slightly she is itching to keep going, but her face betrays none of that impatience and is instead open and worried.

Peter clears his throat, having to figure out how to use his voice when it’s been hours. “We don’t have train tickets,” he points out dumbly.

“We can just buy some there,” MJ replies, not unkindly. She must see the panic that briefly flashes over his face at the thought of going up to the ticket office; when they normally travel it’s in the early hours of the morning and they only ever have to deal with night staff that are too half-asleep to pay close attention to them, if they even have to deal with staff at all that is, this is different. MJ rushes to ease his fears, “It’s gonna be okay. We’re just Ben and Mary-Jane buying train tickets for a last minute stop on our road trip.”

Peter doesn’t respond immediately, still worried at the prospect of what they’re about to do.

MJ carries on, “I read this book by Jonna Mendez, the former CIA chief of disguise, where she talked about the key to a good disguise and it’s all in committing to the character of your disguise rather than your outward appearance. If you go in with confidence and embody whoever you’re supposed to be, people won’t be suspicious or even blink twice.”

She’s sort of rambling, but it helps calm Peter’s fears somewhat. He’s a pretty crappy actor but MJ is good, and he trusts her. So he takes a deep breath to calm himself then, “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”

They get to the train station, and it’s the post commuter rush slump so it’s not overwhelmingly busy the way Peter’s panicked mind had envisioned but it’s not as quiet as the stations they’ve been to tend to be during the times the pair usually travel. Peter stays close to MJ, hand gripping onto hers for dear life, as they make their way to buy their tickets.

MJ does most of the talking as usual, dialling up the charm and being slightly flirtatious to the young(ish) guy behind the counter. Peter decides his “character” is of a broody boyfriend, just standing there quietly and clenching his jaw in a way that makes the attendant bristle and tone down the flirtatious tone he’d begun using with MJ (she is 17, creep).

They manage to buy the tickets with no hitch, MJ bidding farewell to the guy behind the counter with a “Thanks, tiger,” and a wink, and Peter has to tamper down the unnecessary pang of jealousy he momentarily feels because she’s just playing a role, and also MJ is her own person and would hate that he felt jealous even if it was just for a brief moment.

They head to their platform to hop onto the train that’s departing within mere minutes, Peter taking out the E.D.I.T.H. glasses of his backpack before they pack their bags onto the overhead rail and settling into their seats.

Whilst MJ presumably texts either Happy or May to update them on what is happening, Peter busies himself with having E.D.I.T.H. scrub any traces of them from any CCTV that may have captured them between the apartment and the train they’re currently on, especially in the public station. Once he’s done with that he covertly looks around at the other passengers in the carriage with them, and has the AI scan for any potential threats or figures that may be law enforcement but E.D.I.T.H. comes up with nothing so eventually he takes them off and tries to settle in for the long journey ahead of them though his spider-sense remains dialled up, his heightened senses ever alert and ready for whatever may come.

It’s only after the train has departed from the train station and they’re about an hour into their journey, the distance between them and New York and the general tri-state area starting to grow enough that Peter’s racing heart is starting to slow down to its resting state, that Peter finally turns to MJ who is intently looking over a printed map she must have grabbed from the station. “I thought you hated the CIA?” He asks teasingly. It’s meant to be an olive branch, of sorts.

Before MJ can even look up at him, he sees the slight twitch of the corner of her mouth in exasperated humour and that all but brings his heart rate down completely.

* * *

It takes them a train, a bus, another bus then a foot journey and a total of nearly 18 hours of travel but they eventually make it to their next safehouse in Ohio, both too spent to stay on the road for any longer.

They’ve been on the road long enough that it’s become a sort of a routine by now, the way they settle into each safehouse when they first get there. MJ goes around the place, riffling through kitchen cupboards and each room, making note of what supplies are stocked in it whilst Peter is on security duty, closing and locking all windows and doors then going through the motions of having E.D.I.T.H. once again scrub CCTV footage before the two settle on the couch and check in and plan.

But this time it’s different. He’s had time to calm down over the near-day they’ve been on the road and is no longer as panicky and on edge, though he still remains hyper-aware and hypervigilant, but the harsh reality of the consequences of his actions hang over them, weighty and suffocating.

The conversation they’d had back at the safehouse in New Jersey only really scratched the surface, he has so much he wants to—no, _needs to_—tell her and he knows that they need to finish the conversation they’d started. He also knows that he’s been letting MJ handle communicating with May and Happy because he’s far too ashamed and guilty to talk to his aunt, and he’s not ready to face her disappointment in him that she’ll try to mask as worry for him; but he’ll know.

He is battling between carrying on the rest of their earlier conversation with MJ or finally calling May and taking responsibility for messing up yet a_gain_ when MJ speaks. “What do you wanna do now, Peter?”

Peter sees the question for what it is, sees that she wants to see where his head is at and is handing over control to him to decide what happens next, sees clearly now how exhausted she is after having to work to get them out here to Ohio whilst he was useless in a state of sheer panic and yet, a part of him just wants her to retain control, to make all the decisions and lead so all he has to do is follow without thinking. But he’s aware that that’s incredibly selfish; they’ve been on the run for months now all because of his mistakes and he made a bad situation worse by being impulsive and selfish, again.

It’s time to own up and face this.

“No more running,” he finally responds after a stretch of silence.

MJ doesn’t immediately question his words, but he sees the conflict and confusion written all over her face in the way her brow furrows and her mouth opens before immediately closing again.

He knows what she’s going to ask so he beats her to responding to her unspoken question, “I’m tired of this, MJ. We can’t keep running ad hiding forever. I can’t keep dragging you along with me as I go across the county for God knows how long.” He pauses and exhales audibly, weary and bone-tired. “I know that the plan was to lay low and let others help me but Stark Industries has been dealing with Congress and daily cyber-attacks on their systems, there are no Avengers to speak of who can save the day and May is…May shouldn’t have to be dealing with all this, she’s just one woman who’s had to look after a kid who she’s not even related to by blood for so long and all I do is make life harder for her. She deserves better.”

He looks up from where his eyes were intently focused on his wringing hands in his lap to face MJ, to look her in the eye. “I can’t keep hiding like this, I’m going insane. I need to be doing something, _anything,_ to help clear my name so we can go home, so we can go back and you can finish high school and go to college and change the world the way I know you will.” There’s a beat of silence then, “But Em, if you think that’s a bad idea and you think we should just wait it out and keep running, then tell me. If you think we should just lay low and keep moving then I’ll do whatever you say.”

He allows his words to hang in the air so MJ can fully process and take them in. Which she does, her eyes carefully boring into his and scanning over his face in search of something; what it is she’s looking for he doesn’t know. Eventually she must find whatever she was looking for because she clears her throat, then quietly, voice barely above a whisper she says, “Okay.” A beat then, “I trust you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh hi lol, long time no see lol. Sorry it's a short one after so long (I'm aware a chap nearly 4.5k isn't short by most standards but have you seen the length of some of the stuff I post lol) but it's kinda hard to get back into the flow of things and carry a narrative on when it's been 8 months. I've kinda lost momentum/direction here but gonna try my best to wrap it up regardless.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this and as always comments and kudos are much appreciated, especially comments bc tho my fics do well kudos-wise I'd really love to hear from you guys more!! Also you can find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The characters of FFH were not privy to Mysterio's little exposition dump super-villain monologue, so let's pretend Peter and MJ don't know about everything he said in that scene for the purpose of this chapter, okay? Okay.

MJ stares at him, deadpan and unamused for a prolonged moment. Finally she says something, “So let me get this straight, when you said _no more running _you didn’t actually have like, a solid plan for what we should do?”

When she puts it like that Peter realises he may have been rash. “I’m not great at the planning stage of things. Coming up with ideas then the execution part I’m great at, but not planning so usually I kind of…_freestyle_ it?”

His girlfriend simply narrows her eyes in disbelief at him and Peter gives her a sheepish smile, more a grimace, in return. He’s such a dumbass and she’s way too smart (and generally too good) for him.

“You’re lucky you have me,” MJ says with an exasperated sigh.

“I know,” Peter responds automatically and earnestly. He’s rewarded by MJ’s smirk melting into a full, toothy, grin and she doesn’t try to hide her grin behind her hair or look away from him the way she used to say, two months ago, just allows him to revel in her reaction.

MJ clears her throat, seeming to catch herself and blinks away her dazed expression. “Okay,” she announces as she gets up to grab her backpack. She comes back to settle on the couch and takes out a pen, notebook and the stark laptop from it. “We need to put together everything we know about that asshole in a cape then use it to work backwards to figure out who sent that video to the Daily Bugle. Or we can work out the source of the cyber attacks on Stark Industries if the Bugle turns out to be a dead end since I’m pretty sure it’s the same person or people, plural.”

She sounds so determined and matter of fact in her tone as she speaks whilst switching on the laptop, all without looking up at him and all Peter can do is watch in amazement.

When Peter doesn’t respond she looks up at him. “What?” She asks, shy and unsure.

“Nothing,” Peter is quick to reassure.

“Okay…” She only sounds partially convinced. “Well then, you can make yourself useful by getting me the Wi-Fi password for this place.”

All too happy to follow her lead, Peter jumps up from the couch to go in search of the standard issue router with the Wi-Fi details on it which he reads out to MJ before rushing to settle back on the couch.

“So we know that Mysterio or Quentin Beck, or whatever the hell his name actually was, was clearly an expert in holographic technology and drones. I think he’d have likely been a huge name in those industries so we could try to look for his real identity by maybe, I don’t know, looking up major companies and firms specialising in holographic and drone technology? Then we can try to find some of his work colleagues who are probably the ones still doing his bidding.” MJ pauses and sighs, half-dejected, “It’s quiet a large pool to look through, but it’s a starting point at least.”

“No.” Is all Peter responds with and at MJ’s questioning look he continues, telling her what he’s suspected all this time but hadn’t voiced because in his attempt to make being on the run at least half-fun for MJ he tried his best to not talk about anything Mysterio-related with her but desperate times and all. “He knew about E.D.I.T.H. and was specifically after it so I think he must have worked for SI at some point. So we should look at people who worked on any projects involving drones or holographic technology within SI.”

“That’ll narrow down our search,” MJ says nodding her head in agreement with his line of thinking. “I’m sure his real name isn’t Quentin Beck so searching for his name probably wouldn’t produce anything, but we can try running his face from footage captured by E.D.I.T.H. against SI employee records. Unless he changed his face too,” She adds as an afterthought.

“Like those '_Mission Impossible_' masks?”

“I was thinking more like the 1996 Japanese horror ‘_The Face of Another’_, but sure.” MJ looks up to catch his eye and the two smile goofily at each other, mirth gleaming in both of their eyes at their very different film tastes. “Okay, so you just have to grab E.D.I.T.H. and do, like, your thing. I don’t know how a super computer accessible only by asshole sunglasses works.”

At that Peter finally pauses, hesitates. When he doesn’t protest to her calling them asshole glasses the way he usually half-heartedly does or move to grab the glasses from where he’d placed them to start sifting through the SI database, MJ looks up at him questioningly, but not impatient more concerned.

Peter reaches up to scratch the back of his neck, a nervous tick he’s had for as long as he can remember. “I know we’ve been using E.D.I.T.H. to delete CCTV footage of us and everything but I—I just don’t know. I’ve been using it to protect us, to protect _you_, but it’s part of the reason we’re in this mess to begin with, y’know? Should we really put everything on E.D.I.T.H.?” He doesn’t dare to look up at MJ because he knows how ridiculous he sounds, unwilling to use a powerful super computer to help him clear his name just because he’s still a little jumpy three and a half months after everything went to shit.

“Peter—” MJ starts to say.

She doesn’t get to say the rest of what she wanted to say because Peter carries on, “I know I’m being stupid.”

“You’re not being stupid,” MJ reassures and only then does he realise that at some point she put the laptop down and shuffled along the couch to sit closer to him. “I know you don’t wanna get excited about the possibility of us finding answers and ending this then have this not work.”

Peter is amazed by how easily she’s able to get to the root of the issue, to see that the issue isn’t really E.D.I.T.H. but more his concerns about what happens if they don't find anything. Then what? He’s so determined to put an end to the fugitive life they’ve been leading, to make it so they can go back to New York, back _home_. But determination alone isn’t enough to end this nightmare.

“I’m scared too,” MJ admits quietly, moving to clutch his hand in her own. “But I have a feeling this will work. Not because I have faith in the weird A.I. slash super weapon thing that Tony Stark definitely should’ve never left in the hands of a teenager.” That gets a faint, bemused snort out of Peter because if there’s one thing MJ is gonna do, it’s let her thoughts on Tony Stark’s shortcomings be known. “But because I have faith in you,” she adds simply, voice impossibly softer.

He could kiss her, he thinks. But before he can give in to the overwhelming urge MJ clears her throat, but doesn’t let go of his hand which is a small victory, then instructs him to try E.D.I.T.H. out.

For the next half hour the pair sit on the couch whilst Peter waits for E.D.I.T.H. to sift through the employee database trying to find a match for Mysterio’s face and MJ for her part googles any new stories about any highly publicised SI employee disputes, figuring a man who loves fame and glory as much as Mysterio did would've likely clashed with Stark at some point.

“_I’m sorry Peter, I could not find any facial recognition matches for the man you knew as Quentin Beck in the Stark Industries database. There’s no digital information on him that pre-dates his first appearance in Ixtenco, Mexico,”_ E.D.I.T.H. eventually announces after the gruelling wait.

Peter feels the disappointment start to creep in because despite his best efforts to keep his expectations low, a part of him had started to believe that maybe, _just maybe_.

His body starts to deflate the more the disappointment blooms within him but before he can float away to the land of utter despair and hopelessness, MJ squeezes his hand, anchoring him in place. “No luck?” MJ asks him gently so as to not startle him.

“No,” Peter sighs defeatedly.

MJ squeezes his hand again, this time firmer and for longer. Then after a stretch of silence, “Hey, I’ve just thought of something. When everything started going down with Mysterio in London our bus driver who picked us up from the station left us on the bus, parked right in the blast zone of the drones. Before I just assumed he panicked and abandoned ship but what if…”

She doesn’t have to finish her thought because Peter is right there with her following her line of thinking. “Hey E.D.I.T.H., any chance you could find out who this bus driver actually was?”

_“Certainly, Peter. Accessing CCTV footage from St Pancras International Station.”_ Peter only has to wait a few brief moments before E.D.I.T.H. presents results to him. _“Meet Gutes Guterman, former Stark Industries employee and ally of the man you knew as Quentin Beck.”_

“Gutes Guterman!” Peter repeats for MJ, ecstatic that they’re finally getting somewhere.

MJ lets go of his hand and wastes no time in googling the man. “Look,” she says, drawing Peter’s attention to the Instagram post she has open on the laptop which shows the man on a beach on some tropical island two days ago, a caption about the "exotic" country he's in that's written beneath the photo whose length and dramatic flair causes MJ to roll her eyes.

She keeps scrolling through his posts, and it’s just more of photos of him in other secluded, but equally tropical locations which makes sense considering he’s a man presumably on the run.

“I can’t believe his profile is public and all of this is just available to us,” Peter says in disbelief.

MJ doesn’t look up at him, instead continuing to look through the man’s photos as she responds, “He probably didn’t think he had to hide since Edna Mode’s worst nightmare was the face of their whole operation.” There’s a pause then, “Hey, look at this.”

What Peter sees is a photo from nearly 14 years ago that appears to be from some sort of holiday party of Guterman with a group of people Peter doesn’t recognise, but what’s most notable is the large SI logo in the background. A work holiday party, maybe?

MJ answers his unspoken question, “Probably an SI holiday party, meaning Guterman knew Mr wannabe Thor through SI. I bet everyone in their little crew were all former SI employees, some of them are probably even in this picture.”

“Woah, you’re amazing,” Peter breathes out, amazed not by the revelation but by MJ.

“Who needs a super computer when people willingly give all their personal data to large corporations like Facebook,” MJ says with a sardonic snort.

The two share a brief smile, then, “I’ll have E.D.I.T.H. cross-check all their faces, then we can track the locations for any confirmed as being connected to Mysterio.”

Peter does just that, finding that two out of seven people in the picture excluding Guterman were all part of Mysterio’s crew: a woman who’s name and location E.D.I.T.H. isn’t able to get as she has seemingly disappeared and deleted her entire digital footprint and a weapons specialist named William Ginter Riva.

“That guy is William Ginter Riva,” Peter says, pointing to the shorter man with glasses in the picture in front of him. “E.D.I.T.H. tracked him to Chicago.”

MJ doesn’t respond immediately, her mind likely running through all the things his own is but mostly important the one simple fact of his current location- _Chicago_. That’s within reach of where they are and they could easily go to him, and with the element of surprise on their side they’d get there before he had the chance to run. But once they got to him then what? Get him to confess? Could it be that easy?

“What do you wanna do?” MJ eventually breaks the silence that had settled between them.

“I guess I go and find him, and get him to confess then hope for the best?” Peter replies with a slight grimace, unsure.

MJ exhales audibly. “No, we- w_e _go and find him and get him to confess. Together.”

She’s insistent and there’s a part of Peter that wants to protest, that overprotective part of him that wants MJ to stay here safe and locked away whilst he goes and deals with this because it’s his mess after all.

He almost goes to say as such but MJ interjects, “You left me by myself in New Jersey to go to New York. You’re not leaving me again.” Her tone is still insistent but it’s tinged with a slight vulnerability.

And she’s right, he made a decision to do something that affected the both of them without even telling her and left her by herself. Not this time. “Okay. Together,” He affirms, taking her hand in his as he does so and squeezing it to punctuate his words.

* * *

Figuring it’d be best to confront William under the cover of darkness, they set off on their nearly 9-hour journey to Chicago in the late afternoon the next day so they can arrive at night time.

Their half-baked plan is this: they’ll settle into a S.H.I.E.L.D. apartment that only happens to be a block away from the one William is staying in per E.D.I.T.H.’s intel (which is suspiciously convenient according to MJ), then Peter will head off to William’s apartment to get him to tell the truth whilst MJ stays behind in the safehouse waiting with her stark phone and laptop ready to send off the video confession to any and every news outlet. It’s not much, and MJ explicitly expressed that she’d have liked to do more planning so they could come up with contingencies but time is not on their side so she relents that it’ll have to do.

They get to the apartment close to 11pm and this time they don’t go through the motions of doing an inventory check and security check the way they usually do, instead MJ quickly gets her little set up ready whilst Peter readies himself to immediately go out.

“Okay so,” he starts as he walks out of the bedroom to MJ, securing his web shooter with just one cartridge of web fluid left in it. “I’m just gonna get into his apartment, web him to like, a chair or something, then get him to tell the truth about Mysterio and how I didn’t try to kill anyone and get it all on video. I’ll send the video to you and then…bada-bing, bada-boom.” He takes a deep breath in then out again try to psych himself up; he knows it likely won’t be that easy but he just wants to go in relaxed.

“Be careful, please,” Is all MJ says in response.

“Always am,” he responds and MJ looks doubtful. “I'll be careful. Okay, gotta go.”

“Wait!” MJ calls out, stopping him in his tracks just as he goes to open the front door and leave.

Before he can so much as blink, MJ is out of her seat and has crossed the small space of the living area to come and stand right in front of him. She presses her lips against his in a gentle peck, lingering there for a minute and the warmth and softness of her lips makes Peter feel fortified, ready to take on the world. She pulls away slowly and equally slowly blinks her eyes open to look into his eyes before she speaks, “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Peter’s lips stretch into a wide grin on their own volition. “_Tiger_? That’s new…” He teases.

“Focus, Peter,” She says, reaching around him to open the door and remind him that he has a job to do that’s not just kissing his girlfriend and obsessing over her new pet name for him.

“Right, yeah. Bye.”

He leaves soon after, making his way to William’s apartment building as stealthily as he can manage with his hood coming down to cover the upper part of his face and his head facing downwards to avoid any potential cameras.

When he gets to the building he pauses momentarily when he realises he forgot to factor in how he’d get in through the building front door. He considers waiting to see if maybe someone goes in or out of the building that he can sneak behind but decides he doesn’t have any time to waste so, after looking around to ensure there’s no one around to see him and there’s no camera facing the door, he utilises his strength to pull the door open, almost pulling it off its hinges.

Sending a silent apology to the building’s tenants for breaking their door, he makes his way inside then takes the stairs two at a time to go up to the fourth floor.

As he rounds the corner of the L-shaped hallway to head to the apartment right at the end, his [name pending] sense – because he _absolutely_ refuses to call it his “peter tingle” no matter how much May and MJ keep calling it that to embarrass him – keeps going off. He pauses in his steps and carefully looks around but doesn’t see anything and the hallway is open with no hiding spots where someone could be hiding so he ignores it. He’d barely been able to hone his extra sense prior to going on the run, but now after being in hiding with MJ for months, he figures it’s just going haywire, which coupled with the adrenaline coursing through him can’t be helping it, he reasons.

He gets to the apartment and as he goes to knock on the door, two weaponised drones that Peter now realises were cloaked to be hidden in plain sight start shooting at him and he just manages to dodge and run back to hide behind the corner.

Peter crouches behind the corner, his breaths coming out in short pants more from panic than from exertion. After he’s given himself a moment to catch his breath, he realises it’s silent with the drones having stopped shooting at him.

Hesitantly, he sticks an arm out around the corner to check if the coast is clear and almost immediately the drones start firing at his arm so he snatches it back to his body. Okay, coast _definitely_ not clear.

“What the hell is going on out here?” Peter hears someone say behind him. He turns and sees a short, old woman wrapped in a robe and looking incredibly annoyed like she’d been woken up.

Shit.

“Uh, there’s someone around the corner who has a gun, ma’am,” Peter rushes to explain.

“Let me call the cops,” she sounds impatient and inconvenienced.

“No!” Peter protests. At her questioning look he clarifies, “I already have and they said the best thing to do is to get to safety and hide till they get here. Is anyone else in the apartment with you?”

She doesn’t look like she fully believes him, but she must decide not to press further. “No I live by myself.”

“Okay, okay. I think it’d be best if everyone evacuated the floor. Please could you help me get everyone else off the floor?”

“Most of ‘em work nights so they aren’t here anyway. You’ll have to knock on 21, 23 and 24 and tell them to leave whilst I grab my outside shoes,” she points vaguely in the direction behind her before she’s turning to go back into her apartment.

Peter is relieved the apartments where the residents are currently in are all on this part of the floor rather than the part with the killer drones. He quickly runs down the hall and knocks on 21, 23 and 24 just as the old lady instructed to tell them there’s a gunman on the floor and they all need to evacuate the floor and go and wait for the police.

Most are doubtful, pointing out that they don’t hear any shooting and questioning how they know he isn’t just trying to get them out of their apartments so he can rob them all. Peter’s quick solution is to get them all to stand by their front doors then he goes and sticks his hand around the corner, and immediately the drones start firing at him finally convincing the residents who begrudgingly decide to go and wait downstairs. They’re all too annoyed at having to leave their apartments at nearly midnight, complaining amongst themselves as they head down the stairs, to question why Peter doesn’t come with them.

With the floor hopefully cleared, Peter comes and crouches by the corner again and takes out his phone, opening the front-facing camera to use to help him see around the corner and figure out where the drones are.

He sees that the drones are still cloaked making it impossible to locate them unless they’re shooting at him. It’d be risky to get the drones to shoot at him just so he can see where they are, which leaves him with just one solution.

But doubt creeps in, telling Peter it’s been so long and he can’t control his sense so it’s unlikely that it’ll work. The doubt is compounded by the pressure he feels to do this and get to William and end this once for all, and Peter can feel his chest starting to constrict and his panic rising.

He scrambles to look around him, cataloguing everything his eyes land on in an effort to calm himself down the way he’s been doing with MJ but the hallway is nearly bare so his cataloguing starts and end with light, wall, door and floor.

Breathing deeply in and out to stop himself panicking further, he desperately tries to push all self-doubt that tells him he’s a useless mess who created this mess and is now too chicken shit to fix it, and instead focus on how to stop his impending panic attack.

Eventually the one thing that gets him to start to calm down, unsurprisingly, is thinking of MJ. He mentally catalogues things about her in his mind; her snaggle tooth that peaks out when he accomplishes the feat of getting her to smile wide and bright, the coffee-stain birthmark she has in the middle of her back slightly to the left, the specific red of her dyed hair and how when he looks closely as he’s playing with her hair, depending on how long between dyes it’s been, he can see her natural brown in her roots.

He continues on doing this until his panic doesn’t subside completely, but enough to get him to start thinking clearly again.

He takes a deep breath in, and then out, closing his eyes to focus himself as he does so. “C’mon Spider-Man,” he whispers to himself as he continues taking slow breaths in then out.

Without thinking and allowing his instinct and additional sense to take over, he stands up and rounds the corner. Immediately the drones start firing once again but Peter crouches and flips to dodge them then shoots out a web which catches onto what he assumes to be one of the drones. He quickly secures his grip on his webbing, then flings the drone on the other end of it sideways, smashing it into the other one and effectively destroying them both.

He waits a moment to ensure there’s no other drone that’s going to start shooting at him then when he’s sure the coast is definitely clear this time he makes his way towards the apartment at the end of the hall.

He doesn’t bother knocking, instead just twisting the door knob with a bit of his super strength enough to break the lock so the door just swings open. On the other side he finds William Ginter Riva in the flesh, hair and beard much longer than they’d been in the picture MJ found and looking particularly unkempt, holding a gun that’s pointed towards the door in his shaky grip.

Peter sighs at the sight. “Mr William Ginter Riva? Please put the gun down.”

The man doesn’t respond, nor does he put the gun down, instead opting to keep the gun pointed at Peter even as his grip grows more and more unsteady.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you or fight you. I’m just here to clear my name, okay? I just need you to tell the truth so please, just put the gun down.” He slowly takes a small step into the apartment, moving closer to him.

William panics and shoots, the bullet grazing Peter on the arm.

Peter groans in pain, doing his best not to scream out at the sharp sting and not to lose his cool and to continue to try and reason with the man who is clearly just scared and panicking, something Peter knows and understands all too well.

“I turned seventeen 2 days ago. I’m just a kid who got these powers by chance and ever since have tried to do my best to use them responsibly to help people, to protect my neighborhood and to look out for the little guy.” He takes a few tentative steps towards him, and almost sighs audibly in relief when he doesn’t shoot at him again. “I don’t know why you and Quentin Beck and Guterman did what you did, why you chose me, but I’m not interested in being the next Iron Man or having responsibility over something as powerful as E.D.I.T.H.. I’m just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and a high school kid and I just want to get back to that so please, please put down the gun.”

Peter’s not sure what where his little speech comes from, the words just tumbling out of him, but it seems to do the trick as he slowly, shakily, lowers his gun and drops it onto the ground. He mutters, “I’m so sorry,” over and over again.

Peter closes the distance between them before he says, “I’m sorry, too.”

“What do you have to be sorry for, kid?”

“For this,” Peter responds before hitting the smaller man with a right cross that knocks him out cold.

He catches the unconscious man as he falls forward and hauls him over his shoulder then secures him with the arm that didn’t get shot. He crosses to the small kitchen and grabs the phone that sits on the small kitchen table and slips it into his hoodie pocket before he grabs the laptop which he tucks under the arm not currently holding a knocked-out man.

Peter then heads out of the apartment and down the stairs, choosing to kick open the fire exit door to leave the building through rather than go to the front of the building and face the residents he told to clear out earlier before then heads back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. apartment trying to be as conspicuous as a relatively small teenager holding a grown man over his shoulder can be.

* * *

When he gets to the apartment, he finds MJ pacing and she startles when he enters the apartment then when her eyes land on the man slung over his shoulder. “What the fuck?”

“I had to improvise,” is all he offers in explanation.

MJ looks like she has more questions but she instead goes to grab a chair from the kitchen and brings it to the living area for him to put William on, which he does before he uses what little remains of his web fluid to tie him to the chair.

“This is his laptop and phone, figured they might be important evidence,” he explains as he places both items on the coffee table.

MJ hums wordlessly.

Peter gets his phone and sets it up, ready to record William’s confession but MJ puts a hand out onto his forearm to stop him. “Wait, we can’t film him like this. It’ll look like he confessed under duress.” She pauses and seems to consider for a moment. “How long till the webbing dissolves?”

“Uh, like, twenty minutes, maybe?”

“Okay, then we wait.” She grabs his phone out of his hand and places it on the table before she grabs his hand and starts to gently tug him along behind her. “In the meantime we can do something about the wound in your arm you’ve been trying to hide from me.”

Peter doesn’t have it in him to protest, feeling quite embarrassed, so instead just follows after her as she leads him to the bathroom.

There she has him sit on the edge of the bath tub then take off his hoodie and t-shirt whilst she reaches for a first aid kit stashed in the cupboard under the sink, the same way it’s been in every S.H.I.E.L.D. house, cabin and apartment they’ve stayed in over the past few months.

When she’s got everything she needs she comes to stand in between his legs then crouches slightly to allow her to take a better look at his wound.

She confirms what he suspected before. “Okay, looks like just a graze.” A beat, then, “You lucky idiot.”

Peter snorts good-naturedly and MJ gives him a toothless smile in return before she gets to work on cleaning out the bits of his t-shirt in the wound. After she’s satisfied with her cleaning job she then carefully sterilizes the wound with alcohol and though it stings, it’s soothing at the same time, with the way her hands meticulously but gently work.

The circumstances are different but he’s transported to that night months ago in Happy’s bathroom when she’d stood between his legs kind of like she is now to dye his hair, the way he’d thought he could just sit there and have MJ’s hands in his hair forever. Part of him thinks he could sit here and have her tend to him forever but another part of him thinks he wouldn’t want to feel the sting of the alcohol forever, and he’s almost certain MJ wouldn’t want to be his personal nurse forever either.

He gets so caught up in the feel of her hands on his skin that he misses it when she finishes sterilising his wound then covers it with a bandage and is only brought out of his haze by her speaking. “I don’t think I did a very good job. I’ve only read about how to do this for my writing, not actually done it. Sorry," She has a sheepish expression on her face as she half-rambles. "I signed up for a first aid course on the way to London that I was gonna do this summer but well…” She leaves the rest unsaid.

“No it’s perfect Em. Thank you for helping me.” And to show his gratitude he wraps his arms firmly around her waist to bring her closer and press his face against her stomach, inhaling the scent on the cheap fabric softener they've been using for laundry whilst on the run, and MJ in turn wraps her hands around his neck in an awkward hug.

They stay like that for a while, just wrapped up in the other, until eventually they have to part because the position isn’t particularly comfortable for MJ.

“Okay, I think twenty minutes is probably up,” MJ announces, moving to grab a bucket in the same cupboard the first aid kit was kept. She fills the bucket with water from the bath tap then pads out of the bathroom.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Peter asks, confused but rushing to follow after her all the same.

MJ doesn’t answer his question, just looks down at William then, “Oh good, the webbing has dissolved.”

“Uh, Em—” Peter starts to say but stops when MJ unceremoniously pours the bucket of cold water over the man in the chair.

William startles awake, blinking rapidly and reaching his hands up to wipe away the excess water that runs down his face and into his eyes before he looks up at the pair, clearly still slightly disoriented.

“Alright asshole,” MJ addresses him as she crouches down to his level. “Sleepy time is over, time to start talking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you saw me have a meltdown over this chapter, no you didn't 💖 (thank you Seek and Emma for letting me ramble at you). No but seriously, though I've done my best to set up how much Peter tried to sit back and not get involved/let people help him and set up how SI was clearly under attack, this chapter still feels hella contrived and stupid to me. I wrote like 4 different versions of them finding William and wasn't happy with any of them and them finding all that info shouldn't have happened so quickly after everything, but I eventually settled on this version bc I've been working on this fic for nearly a year and I need to wrap it up before I lose steam completely and just abandon it altogether.
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoyed this and comments and kudos are always much appreciated! And you can find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


	7. Chapter 7

The two teenagers (mostly MJ) face off against the older man for a prolonged stretch of time where no one says anything. MJ looks down at the man in the chair intently, eyes narrowed with suspicion whilst William in turn watches MJ with an unwavering gaze, his expression that of pure terror; he looks as terrified, if not more so, of MJ as he had of him when he first broke down the front door of his apartment. Peter is equal parts impressed and scared by MJ, and a distant part of him wonders if this is what Aaron Davis had meant about being good at the interrogation part of the job because MJ hasn’t even said a word and William is already quaking with fear.

Peter’s eyes keep flicking from William’s petrified face, a bead of sweat now running down his forehead, to MJ’s petrifying expression. William to MJ, MJ to William, William to MJ, until: “C-c-could I maybe, um, maybe have a glass of water before we start? Please?” It’s William who breaks the tense silence, his voice as shaky and as scared as his facial expression.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” Peter says, hand moving to scratch the back of his neck uneasily.

“No,” MJ says at the same time causing Peter to whip his head around to her, staring at her wide-eyed and slightly shocked. Her eyes stay focused on William as she says, “You can have some water once we’re done with you.” Her voice is flat but there is a threatening undercurrent to it that demands that William, and Peter by extension, do exactly as she says.

“Get your phone camera ready, I’ll let you know when to start filming,” MJ instructs in a calm tone, still without looking away from William who at this point Peter thinks will have died of dehydration before they finish getting his confession with the amount he’s sweating.

Peter does as he’s told, grabbing his phone and starting to film William.

“So do I— what do I say?” William asks, voice unsteady, looking between the camera and MJ. It’s funny Peter thinks, William has all but stopped acknowledging him now; he clearly knows it’s not Peter that’s in charge here.

MJ tilts her head to the side seemingly in thought then eventually, “You’re gonna confess that you and your little cronies were behind everything that happened in Venice, Prague and London. You’re gonna confess that you edited that video and framed Peter. You’re gonna give us all the evidence that backs this up that I know you have on that laptop. And, you’re gonna confess that you’ve been behind all the cyber-attacks on Stark Industries.”

Her tone is final and leaves no room for negotiation, so William acquiesces, nodding his head rapidly.

There’s a pause where William seems to consider his words and how best to start but the pause stretches on too long for MJ’s liking so she crouches down and brings her face a mere few inches away from William. “That means start talking, asshole,” she doesn’t raise her voice or anything, but she sounds threatening all the same.

“Well, where to start?” Williams stutters out with a nervous laugh. MJ looks at him unamused so he nervously clears his throat to start again, “It all started when I was fired by Obadiah Stane…”

Satisfied that he’s gonna come clean now, no more bullshit, MJ stands up straight and moves out of the man’s face then turns and nods to Peter, signalling for him to start filming as they let the man tell his story. They mostly let him do the talking with MJ occasionally interrupting to get him to clarify the details of something, all the while Peter silently films it all.

Once they’ve covered everything from how Beck first gathered all the disgruntled former SI employees, to combining the drone technology with the holographic CGI technology, to Ixtenco, Venice, Prague, London and finally framing Peter and everything since, MJ asks Peter to fetch some water and food for the man.

Peter, ever dutiful and still slightly in awe of and/or scared of MJ, does as she asks and brings back a glass of tap water and a plate with two slices of toast and an apple; he’s not entirely sure what one feeds someone they sort of maybe kidnapped to interrogate.

MJ eyes the food Peter brings back and he sees the way the corner of her lip sort of twitches in barely concealed bemusement before she schools her features and takes it from him before she handing it off to William with a sly comment about this not being like Guantanamo Bay.

William goes to take a sip of his water, famished and grateful, when MJ stops him, “Not so fast. We need access to your laptop.”

“If you give it to me, I’ll log on and get you all the files you need,” William responds, clearly having gotten too comfortable because Peter doesn’t know why else he’d try to bargain or negotiate with MJ.

She levels him with a threatening stare and immediately William reverts back to the nervous, bumbling mess he was before. “Uh, it’s just that—that I have to scan my iris to unlock the laptop then the files are all password protected, different passwords for each file.” He gulps, nerves radiating off him in waves when MJ doesn’t respond. “It’d just be quicker if I retrieved everything for you,” he adds almost pleadingly.

MJ sighs, rolls her eyes, then turns to Peter. “Give him the laptop,” she instructs.

Peter places the laptop on the table in front of William to allow him to use it which he does as MJ hovers over his shoulder menacingly, watching his every move.

Once he’s got everything open, MJ promptly takes the laptop away from him along with the phone they used to film his long-winded confession and goes to sit down on the kitchen table. Peter isn’t entirely sure what he’s supposed to do but at the last minute opts to stay with William, watching over him because the last thing he needs is for William to escape and have MJ think of him as an even bigger idiot than she likely already does.

A few minutes of MJ furiously typing and clicking away on the laptop and phone pass before MJ eventually says something. “I’ve sent all the files and videos and everything else I could find to Happy and May, and to every news outlet including J Jonah Jameson’s garbage excuse for a news outlet.” She announces to the pair before snapping the laptop shut. “Also, I’m keeping this,” she says directly to William this time, indicating to the laptop before she gets up out of her seat and turns to finally look at Peter.

As MJ stands there watching him expectantly it suddenly hits Peter. That this is it: _they did it_.

And suddenly he’s so overcome with a barrage of emotions; relief that he’s finally got the evidence that means he’ll be able to clear his name and go home to May finally which exists simultaneously with his lingering anger over the months of his and MJ’s life they’ve lost on the run over a lie, but most importantly, what he feels the most as he stares at the girl in front of him is an immeasurable gratitude for MJ and how she has stuck with him through everything, her loyalty never wavering, an anchor keeping him steady in choppy waters.

It’s all too much, and before he can stop himself Peter finds himself wordlessly jogging the small space across the apartment to the bedroom where he slams the door shut behind him and starts pacing, trying to process everything.

_It’s over_.

After months of running and hiding, of being constantly on high alert with his paranoia dialling up his enhanced senses to eleven, of having his youth stolen once again…it’s all over.

There’s a small niggling part of him that questions if it could really be over just like that, a part of him that starts to question his current reality. It would be like Beck, or Mysterio, or whatever his name actually was, to orchestrate an entire illusion where Peter sees himself come so close to clearing his name and ending the nightmare of his making just to snatch it all away at the very last second.

The familiar rumblings of a panic attack are starting to bubble up within him just as the bedroom door swings open and MJ walks in. If she notices the way his fists are clenched tightly at his sides or the way his breaths come out in short, shallow pants, she doesn’t point it out. She just comes and flops onto the bed, then with a loud exhale announces, “Sorry, I was just tying William up.” She then gently grabs his hand and tugs on it until he gets the hint and comes to sit down on the bed next to her. “Wouldn’t want him escaping under my watch,” she adds, quieter and slightly self-conscious, rubbing a hand over his knuckles.

Peter allows the repetitive rhythm she strokes her thumb over his knuckles with to replace the repetitive cycle of thoughts that run through his mind until all that’s left is just MJ—her touch, her steady breath and just her presence.

He revels in the comfortable silence they fall into for a while, neither wanting to break the spell.

“So…” MJ eventually breaks the silence but her voice is barely above a whisper like she doesn’t want to somehow startle him.

Peter exhales audibly, squeezes her hand tightly in his, then, “So?”

“What do you wanna do now?” MJ asks, squeezing his hand like he did hers.

“I should probably call May.” A beat. “I can’t keep avoiding her forever.”

That gets an amused snort out of MJ. “I can only keep coming up with excuses for why you can’t come to the phone for so long.”

He knows she’s teasing but his residual guilt still eats at him. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I did something stupid then made you talk to my aunt because I was too scared to—”

Peter doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence as MJ presses her lips against him in a kiss that’s barely there but achieves its intended purpose of getting him to stop his usual rambling; MJ’s always doing that.

“Has anyone ever told you you apologize too much? And for things you don’t need to apologize for no less,” MJ says when she pulls away from their kiss, a smirk starting to dance across her features.

That gets a genuine laugh out of Peter for the first time in what feels like so long. “Yeah, _you_.”

“And I’m always right.”

Peter is overcome with the urge to kiss her again and goes to do just that but MJ pulls back slightly and places a hand gently on his shoulder, keeping her lips just infuriatingly out of his reach. “Seriously though, what do we do now?”

“We need to go back to New York and hand William over to the authorities,” Peter says more definitively this time. MJ nods as he continues, “But first I need to call May.”

MJ hands him one of their burners then tells him, “Okay, I’ll leave you to it,” as she makes to get up off the bed.

Peter keeps gripping her hand and tugs on it slightly, pleadingly. “Stay.” Then after a brief pause, “Please.”

She looks down at him affectionately then wordlessly settles back onto the bed, making herself comfortable as Peter dials May’s number.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning Peter, MJ along with William pack themselves into William’s car with Peter and William occupying the back seat whilst MJ gets into the driver’s seat.

Through the phone call to May and Happy, they’d come up with a plan for them to get to a private air field just outside of Chicago to get onto a Stark Industries private jet back to New York. The only minor snag in the plan was the issue of how they were going to get to the air field— they could’ve taken public transport the way they’d been doing for the past few months, but they had to account for travelling with William who was essentially their prisoner even though Peter didn’t wanna admit it.

William had offered up his car, kindly offering to drive the trio to the air field which MJ had immediately shot down, pointing out that considering they were going to New York to hand him over to law enforcement he couldn’t be trusted to drive them to where they needed to go and instead told them she’d drive the car to their destination.

Peter was surprised to learn that MJ could drive, but then he’d remembered a whispered conversation had under the cover of darkness in a safehouse somewhere between Vermont and Maine; the geography of the places they’ve been over the last few months isn’t so clear to him anymore, but every moment spent and every word exchanged with MJ is still startlingly clear. So he remembers her confessing to him that since she was 13, not even a year after her mom passed, she made up a plan to run away from her dad and part of executing this plan was using the large allowance she gets in lieu of actual parenting to pay for driving lessons.

Now as they make the relatively short 45-minute journey to the air field Peter thinks that though he wishes he could change the circumstances under which she learnt to drive, he’s glad one of them can drive. Part of him envisions going out in May’s old beat up Volkswagen with her when he eventually learns to drive, maybe they could go on a road trip to visit Harvard which is MJ’s dream school together, but he reigns in his fantasies, knowing that’s too distant a future to start thinking about now.

Instead he chooses to focus on watching William intently in case he might be up to something, but the man just sleeps for the entire duration of their short car journey, snuggling into Peter’s side to get comfortable.

They get to the air field in no time at all where they find who he assumes to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents waiting for them outside the plane and they move to immediately handcuff William, before escorting him onto the private plane, leaving him and MJ to follow behind with all their stuff.

Peter slowly walks onto the plane behind MJ, too distracted as he looks around at the plane because it may be his second time on a private jet but he doesn’t think he’ll ever not be impressed that he nearly walks into MJ who’s stood stock still. “What’s going—” he goes to ask her, slightly concerned before he looks over her shoulder and sees what has stopped her in her tracks.

Stood a few feet ahead of them is May and she’s stood with Happy beside her, but Peter’s attention is focused solely on May who watches him with a teary smile which he’s sure he wears as well.

MJ steps aside to allow him to run forward, straight into May’s open arms. He only barely manages to not fully throw himself into her embrace, reminding himself he’s no longer the small ten year old boy he once was and if he were to actually launch himself into her arms, he’d tackle his poor aunt to the ground.

The two of them simultaneously sigh with relief once their arms are wrapped around each other, melting into each other’s embrace and Peter lets himself bask in the warmth of her maternal affection as May lovingly ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck.

They stay like that, just holding onto one another for what could be seconds, minutes, or hours he’s not entirely sure, only letting the other go once one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents announces that they’ll be taking off in less than five minutes.

The two of them separate from their hug, but neither can bring themselves to fully let go so they stay holding hands as May turns to face MJ. “Get over here, missy,” she says, stern but fond, signalling for MJ to come to her and give her a hug.

She hesitates momentarily but then MJ crosses the small distance between them, May finally letting go of Peter’s hand as she wraps both arms firmly around MJ’s middle and pulls her close against her.

They stay wrapped up in a tight hug for a prolonged moment until May unwraps one of her arms from MJ and signals for Peter to join them. “C’mon, get in here,” she says between joyous tears as she pulls Peter into a group hug with him, May and MJ. “My smart, smart kids. You’re coming home,” May whispers with a quiet joy that matches the way Peter’s heart pitter patters in his chest, being wrapped up in the arms of the most important women in his life.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent pointedly announcing that they should all take their seats and buckle up as they’re about to take off is what finally gets them all to let each other go and settle into seats close by to each other.

“Hi Happy,” Peter greets, half sheepish and half teasing as MJ simply nods at the older man.

Happy snorts and shakes his head but there’s a fondness to it Peter wouldn’t normally expect from the man whose default is exasperation where Peter is concerned, but Peter gets it, he’s just as relieved and happy to see Happy again.

Once they’ve taken off and are in the air, Happy starts talking shop. “As soon as we land they’ll be feds waiting to take William away and process him on their end.”

“All the news outlets have been running the story with all the material from William you sent them,” May joins in. She turns to MJ, “That was really smart to send it out.”

MJ smiles, a small, shy thing and tucks a strand of her fading red hair they hadn’t gotten the chance to re-dye after doing his in New Jersey, embarrassed as she always is when she receives compliments. She clears her throat then, quietly responds with a, “It was nothing.”

The conversation launches off into talking about what the public’s reaction has been to the truth coming out, specifically what J Jonah Jameson has been saying to try and spin this into still having Spider-Man be the bad guy but Peter barely pays attention to it, much less participates. His mind is caught up in thinking about what comes next.

Through everything MJ sent to the press his name may be clear in the eyes of the public, and he knows that once they hand off William to the feds he’ll be able to clear his name in the eyes of the law too. But he can’t help but feel like it’s not enough, that there’s more that he can do to guarantee this nightmare ends for good and the people he loves can have their lives back.

“I need to hand myself in with William,” Peter bursts out, interrupting the conversation happening around him before he’s even had time to properly formulate his idea.

A charged silence settles over the group as May, MJ and Happy all turn to look at him in disbelief.

It’s May who’s first to speak, “Peter, what? No you don’t.” Her voice rises an octave as she speaks, in anger or in panic Peter’s not sure.

“May—”

“No. _No_,” May interrupts. “You don’t need to do that. Who knows how long the feds will hold you; what if they decide to take you to trial?” There’s a silence that follows where May starts to tear up and Peter doesn’t know what to say, feeling guilty at how he continues to cause this woman who loves him so unconditionally so much pain.

The splintering cracks in his heart shatter fully when May speaks again, “I’ve only just got you back.” The words are choked out in between sobs.

Peter is in the process of unbuckling his seatbelt to go across to where May sits so he can comfort her when MJ gets up and rushes to the bathroom before closing the door. Peter’s gaze pans from May to the closed bathroom door at the back of the plane, torn about what to do when he sees Happy moving to sit closer to May and nodding his head towards the bathroom to signal to Peter what he should do.

He sees Happy wrap a sobbing May up in his arms as he gets up and heads to the back of the plane.

He knocks gently on the locked door, making an effort to not use his enhanced senses to listen on her partly because it’d be an invasion but mostly because he thinks he might crumble if he hears MJ crying after the way he’s just made May cry too. “MJ, can I come in?” He asks gently.

There’s a brief pause where she doesn’t respond and Peter thinks she might just ignore him until he goes away but then eventually she quietly responds. “I’m using the bathroom, Parker.”

It’s meant to be snarky but Peter doesn’t miss the slight wobble to her words like she’s trying to hold back tears and his heart breaks even more. “Em, _please_.”

Again there’s a momentary silence where MJ neither responds nor moves where Peter holds his breath. He finally exhales when he hears the lock of the door turn and she opens the door, allowing him to squeeze into the cramped bathroom with her.

There’s barely space for the two of them so Peter shuffles around to settle on the closed toilet lid then gently tugs at MJ’s hand until she settles on his lap. He wraps his arms around her middle, bringing her as close as possible to press her against him whilst she wraps her arms around his neck and tucks her face into his neck, which he feels start to dampen with MJ’s quiet tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Peter whispers, similarly crying and getting the shoulder of his hoodie that’s essentially become hers over the last few months wet with his tears.

MJ pulls away and wipes at her face with the sleeve of the hoodie. “Did you always intend to hand yourself in?”

“No. Maybe?” A pause then, “I don’t know.”

MJ snorts but it’s humourless; she clearly doesn’t believe him.

“I guess, part of me has always known that I was gonna have to clear my name in the eyes of the law too. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, until now.” MJ doesn’t respond, just quietly sniffles so Peter tries to reassure her. “Hey, with all the evidence of my innocence we have plus William’s witness testimony they’ll let me go soon enough. You’ll see.” He reaches a hand up and wipes at a stray tear that escapes before letting his hand linger over the soft skin of her cheek.

“You have way too much faith in the broken American criminal justice system,” MJ whispers, voice still teary but there’s a hint of a smile in it as she brings one of her own hands up and smooths his out of place eyebrow that she’s repeatedly told him annoys her and threatened to pluck or thread to straighten it out, though he secretly thinks she likes it.

Peter just shrugs wordlessly in a way he hopes is endearing as he moves to grab hold of MJ’s hand before he kisses her open palm. “I love you,” he whispers out the words that have been threatening to come out every night they’d be huddled in the bed of the safehouse of the week sharing secrets; he didn’t tell her this one secret for fear of scaring her off.

When Peter lets go of her hand she moves it to flick his ear, but it’s so gentle it barely registers. “You have the worst timing ever,” she huffs, going for incredulous but there’s a breathless quality to her voice.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You—”

He interjects, “I apologize too much, I know.”

MJ rolls her eyes but smiles down at him. “I was actually gonna say you too,” she says quietly and Peter’s heart seizes in his chest. She clears her throat, then, “I mean I love you, _too_.”

Peter grins and pulls her in for a lingering, gentle kiss. The last kiss they might share for God knows how long.

When air becomes a necessity they pull apart from their kiss but MJ stays on his lap and in Peter’s arms, her forehead pressed against his own as the two just breathe the other in for a while longer. “I don’t fully get the why but I know you need to do this, so I’m with you,” she tells him quietly, rubbing her nose gently up and down along his.

All Peter can do is kiss her again, overcome by just how much he feels for her that he could never put into words.

They exchange a few more chaste kisses, both prolonging the time until they need to leave the safe cocoon of the bathroom.

“We should probably go back,” MJ says but makes no move to get off him.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, similarly making no move to get up and instead splaying his hand that had snuck underneath MJ’s hoodie and t-shirt at some point across the expanse of the warm skin of the small of her back before gently stroking it up and down.

“I’m kind of embarrassed to face everyone after I stomped off like a moody teenager,” MJ admits shyly.

Peter laughs, not unkindly, “We could just stay in here ‘til we land, if you want.”

“That’d be really dumb,” she says with a small laugh as she finally gets up, and Peter has to resist the urge to pout. She reaches a hand down, “Come on, let’s go.”

Peter grabs her hand and uses it to pull himself up then they shuffle out of the bathroom together and head back to May and Happy where MJ lets go of his hand and heads back to her own seat whilst he goes to May’s seat so they can have a quick, quiet conversation.

* * *

They get to New York close to 9am, the start of the business day, landing at a private air field just outside the city.

There are multiple black, standard issue SUVs waiting for them which could only belong to federal agents along with a group of many smartly dressed agents. Peter briefly wonders how all of them could be needed to apprehend someone a single man that’s as non-threatening as William before he realises they’re all here for _him_.

Raising his hands in surrender, Peter walks forward towards the group of agents who as soon as he’s close enough, waste no time to cuff him whilst a couple of them break off to go and do the same with William.

One of the agents says something to Peter but he doesn’t hear a word of it, his attention focused on his family who watches on as he’s arrested. Happy has his arms wrapped around May who Peter can tell from the way her body shakes is quietly crying, and he doesn’t begrudge her for choosing to look the other way rather than watch him as he gets arrested and taken away.

His eyes then pan to MJ who he finds watching him calmly with no tears, always his beacon of his strength. Peter smiles at MJ one more time who gives him a toothless smirk in return before he’s hustled into the back of the nearest SUV which has blacked out windows, then they’re pulling away from the air field and away from the majority of the people who mean the most to Peter.

It’s as they’re driving away that the weight of what he’s chosen to do hits him, that he’s handing himself over to law enforcement and what they choose to do with him, what happens next, is completely uncertain.

A voice at the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like MJ’s tells him he’s a dumbass who’s made a dumbass decision so has to just see it through and live with it now, and Peter smiles to himself.

Before long, the car comes to a stop then he’s being shuffled out to go into some non-descript building where he has to go through the motions of being photographed, have his finger prints taken, before he’s uncomfortably, and thoroughly searched then taken to change out of his own clothes into a standard issue beige jumpsuit.

After it’s all done they dump him in a cell by himself, his hands still handcuffed and with no word about what happens now or what they are going to do with him.

Peter’s left alone with his thoughts which drift to his family, as they always do. He thinks about the way May always squeezes him extra tight when she hugs him and ruffles his hair, only now being able to reach the hair at the nape of his neck rather than at the top of his head since he’s grown taller than her. He thinks about the almost guilty facial expression she wears when he finds her after another failed attempt by her to make them dinner before they both break out into laughter as she opens the drawer in their small kitchen that’s stuffed to the brim with takeout menus, asking him to choose what they can have for dinner instead.

He guiltily thinks about Ned, who he hasn’t seen or spoken to since they first landed back in New York. He thinks about the way Ned would get so excited about even the most mundane details from his patrols, and the way he’d never complain when Peter would fall asleep when the two hung out at either of their places, tired from trying to balance being a regular teenager and Spider-Man all at once, and instead would wrap a blanket around him and tuck him in.

Mostly though, he thinks about MJ. He thinks about the way she bites her lip when she’s reading a particularly tense part of her novel, the way her body would automatically, sleepily seek his out when he’d join her in bed late at night, and the way she’d giggle and watch him with keen interest on the porch of the safehouse they stayed in in Vermont as they watched the stars and he told her everything about the constellations Ben had taught him. Being on the run and moving from safehouse to safehouse was hell, but part of him misses the days they could just do nothing but stay in bed all day together just the two of them, completely uninterrupted.

He smiles to himself, remembering the people he loves the most, the people that he’s doing all of this for and allows that to give him some sense of comfort.

It’s as he’s getting lost in his thoughts, thinking about MJ’s eyes, her smile, her _lips_, that he hears a distant _tap, tap, tap _ tapping sound that sounds like it’s getting closer the more he listens. It sounds like something tapping against the floor but he isn’t entirely sure what it could be, even as he tries to focus his senses on the sound.

He’s almost startled when a man appears in front of his cell. He’s dressed in a slightly rumpled grey suit, with red tinted sunglasses covering his eyes, a white cane which Peter now realises is what he could hear tapping against the linoleum of the floor in one hand and a black briefcase in the other hand.

Peter doesn’t say anything, just watches the man quietly and sizes him up as the hairs on the back of his neck rise to attention though he’s not sure what his sense could be picking out about the seemingly non-threatening man who stands before him.

Though from what he can gather about the man that stands before him he thinks it’s likely impossible, Peter gets the distinct feeling that the man is similarly watching and sizing him up in return.

“Hi, Peter Parker. I hear you’re in need of a lawyer,” the man says with a smile that’s mostly earnest, but there’s something lurking beneath the surface that coupled with his enhanced sense picking up s_omething_, has Peter feeling a heady mixture of relief whilst still being slightly on edge.

The man takes off his glasses and tucks then into his breast pocket, allowing Peter to see his eyes which are earnest and open, though they’re not focused on him directly. He then moves closer and Peter tenses slightly, but relaxes, only mildly, when the man smiles and speaks again, “I’m Matt Murdock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, it's taken me a year but it's finally done!!! Yes I know the ending is rushed and it's a little open/vague but as you can all see, this is now a series bc I have zero self control. I have tentative plans for a 'the trial of spider-man' sequel fic from mj's pov where she forces her way onto an internship with matt then sinister forces try to interfere with trial proceedings blah blah blah. But currently that sentence you've just read is as far as I've gotten in the planning/outlining stage so don't expect part 2 anytime soon. Especially bc I've started a new multi-chap fic called ['Tough Luck'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26072977/chapters/63414199) which I'd really appreciate you all checking out if you like, want to.
> 
> Anyway that's enough rambling from me. Thank you all for sticking with me this past year, especially to those that left kudos and took the time to leave comment(s). I appreciate you all so much and one last time- as always, comments and kudos are much appreciated!!  
You can find me on tumblr @tvfanatic97-2 and on twitter @dayaspsychic x


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